D erek Bi cke r ton
Roots of
' Language
1981
KAROMA PUBLISHERS, INC. ANN ARBOR
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2 9 3 151.
ISBN 0-89720-044-6 (Hardcover)
First hardcover printing, November 18th, 1981; Second hardcover printing, March 31st, 1982; Third hardcover printing, January llth, 1983
First paperback printing, April I st, 1985: ISBN 0-89720-073-X Copyright © 1981 by Karoma Publishers, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
Printed and Published in the United States of America
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To the people of Palmares,
El Palenque de San Basilio, The Cockpit Country,
and the Saramacca River, who fought for decency, dignity , and freedom
against the Cartesian savagery of Western colonialists and slavemak ers;
whose tongues, having survived
to confound pedagogue and philosopher alike, now, by an ironic stroke ofjustice,
offer us indispensable keys to the knowledge of our species.
The research on which the first two chapters of this volume are based would not have been possible without the support of NSF Grants Nos. GS-39748 and S0C75-14481, for which grateful acknowledgment is hereby made. I am also indebted to the University of Hawaii for granting me an additional leave of absence which, together with my regular sabbatical leave, gave me two years in which to work out the theory presented here.
The ideas contained in this volume have been discussed, in person and in correspondence, with many colleagues; while it is in a sense in vidious to pick out names, Paul Chapin, Talmy Given, Tom Markey, and Dan Slobin have been among the most long-suffering listeners. I am also grateful to Frank Byrne, Chris Corne, Greg Lee, and Dennis Pres ton for reading parts of the manuscript. Needless to say, I alone remain responsible for whatever errors and omissions may still be present.
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BC CNCD CR
DJ
Eng. Fr. GC GU HC HCE HPE
roe
JC KR LAC LAD MC
Pg. PIC PIC PK PNPD
pp
PQ RC SA SC
SNSD SPD SR SSC ST
ABBREVIATIONS AND ACRONYMS
Belize Creole
Causative-Noncausative Distinction Crioulo
Djuka English French
Guyanese Creole Guyanais
Haitian Creole
Hawaiian Creole English Hawaiian Pidgin English Indian Ocean Creole(s) Jamaican Creole
Krio
Lesser Antillean Creole Language Acquisition Device Mauritian Creole
Portuguese
Propositional Island Constraint Providence Island Creole
Papia Kristang
Punctual-Nonpunctual Distinction Papiamentu
Palenquero Reunion Creole Saramaccan Seychelles Creole
Specific-Nonspecific Distinction State-Process Distinction
Sranan
Specified Subject Condition Sao Tomense
I
l CONTENTS
I
List of Abbreviations and Acronyms viii
Chapter 1: Pidgin into Creole . . .. .. . . . . . .. . . . . . ._ 1
Table 1.1: Word order in HPE and HCE 20
Chapter 2: Creole 43
Table 2.1: Four accounts of the ST TMA system 76
Chapter 3: Acquisition 136
Table 3.1:
Stative-nonstative
distinctions in
GC 160
Table 3.2: Past versus punctual in decreolization 165
Table 3.3: Rank orders for past-marking frequency 169
Figure 3.1: Comparative TMA acquisition (Italian versus English) 178
Chapter 4: Origins 214
Figure 4.1: The minimal "flower" 228
Figure 4.2: Semantic space for four relationships 245
Figure 4.3: Semantic space for Guyanese articles 247
Figure 4.4: Semantic space for English articles 249
Figure 4.5: Semantic space for location, etc., in GC 250
Figure 4.6: Hypothetical tree structure for semantic primes 252
Figure 4.7: The predicability tree 253
Figure 4.8: Semantic space around habituals 259
Figures 4.9(a) , (b), and (c):
Alternative analyses of habitual space 260
Chapter 5: Conclusions 294
Figure 5.1:
Relationship of
bioprogram to
formal universals 298
TP Tok Pisin
Notes 303
Bibliography 321 Name
Index 335
\
Subject Index
341
Of all
the fields
of study
to which
human beings
have devoted
themselves, linguistics
could lay
claim to
being the
most conservative. Two
thousand five
hundred years
ago, Panini
began it
by describing
an individual human
language, and
describing individual
languages is
what the majority
of linguists
are still
doing. Even
during the
last couple
of decades, in
which linguists
have begun
to be
interested in
some of
the larger issues
that language
involves, the
main thrust
toward clarifying
those issues
has involved
making more
and more
detailed and
ingenious descriptions of
currently existing
natural languages.
In consequence,
little headway
has been
made toward
answering the
really important
questions which
language raises,
such as:
how is
language acquired
by the individual,
and how
was it
acquired by
the species?
The importance
of these
questions is,
I think,
impossible to
exaggerate. Language
has made
our species
what it
is, and
until we really
understand it-that
is, understand
what is
necessary for
it to
be
acquired and
transmitted, and
how it
interacts with
the rest
of our cognitive
apparatus-we cannot
hope to
understand ourselves.
And unless
we can
understand ourselves,
we will
continue to
watch in
helpless frustration
while the
world we
have created
slips further and
further from
our control.
The larger
and, in
a popular
sense, more
human issues
which language involves
lie outside
the scope of
the present
work, and
will be dealt
with at
length in
a forthcoming
volume, Language
and
Species.
First,
there is
a good
deal of
academic spadework
to be
done. In
the chapters that
follow, I
shall try
to develop
a unified
theory which
will·propose
at least
a partial
answer to
three questions,
none of
which has
as yet
been satisfactorily
resolved:
How did creole languages originate?
How do children acquire language?
How did human language originate?
'
xii INTRODUCTION INTRODUCTION xiii
Traditionally, these three questions, insofar as they have been treated at all, have been treated as wholly unrelated. None of the solutions offered for (1) have had any relevance to (2) or (3); none 'of the solu tions offered for (2) have had any relevance to (1) or (3) ; and none of the solutions offered for (3) have had any relevance to (1) or (2). It has even been explicitly denied, although without a shred of support ing evidence, that an answer to (1) could possibly be an answer to (3) (Sankoff 1979). Here and there, a few insightful scholars have hinted at possible links between the problems, and such insights will be ac knowledged in subsequent pages. However, a single, unified treatment has never even been attempted, and this book, whatever its short comings, may therefore claim at least some measure of originality. Doubtless many of its details will need revision or replacement; the explorer is seldom the best cartographer. However, of one thing I am totally convinced: that the three questions are really one question, and that an answer to any one of them which does not at the same time answer the other two will be, ipso facto, a wrong answer.
I shall begin with the origin of creoles. To some, this may appear the least general and least interesting question of the three. However, as I shall show, creoles constitute the indispensable key to the two larger problems, and this should come as no surprise to those familiar with the history of science, in which, repeatedly, the sideshow of one generation has been the central arena of the next. In Chapter 1, I shall examine the relationship between the variety of Creole English spoken in Hawaii and the pidgin which immediately preceded it, and I shall show how several elements of that creole could not have been derived from its antecedent pidgin, or from any of the other languages that were in contact at the time of creole formation, and that therefore these elements must have been, in some sense, "invented." In Chap ter 2 I shall discuss some (not all-there would not be space for all) of the features which are shared by a wide range of creole languages and show some striking resemblances between the "inventions" of Hawaii and "inventions" of other regions which must have emerged
quite independently ; and I shall also try to probe more deeply into
'
certain aspects of creole syntax and semantics which may prove signifi cant when we come to deal with the other two questions. In Chapter 3, which will deal with "normal" language acquisition in noncreole societies, I shall show that some of the things which children seem to acquire effortlessly , as well as some which they get consistently wrong both equally puzzling to previous accounts of "language learning"- follow naturally from the theory which was developed to account for creole origins: that all members of our species are born with a bio program for language which can function even in the absence of ade quate input. In Chapter 4, I shall try to show where this bioprogram comes from: partly from the species-specific structure of human perception and cognition, and partly from processes inherent in the expansion of a linear language. At the same time, we will be able to resolve the continuity paradox ("language is too different from animal communication systems to have ever evolved from them"; "language, like any other adaptive mechanism, must have been derived by regular evolutionary processes") which has lain like some huge roadblock across the study of language origins. In the final chapter, I shall briefly summarize and integrate the findings of previous chapters, and suggest answers to some of the criticisms which may be brought against the concept of a genetic program for human language.
Chapter 1
PIDGIN INTO CREOLE
If one wants to account, ultimately, for the origins of human language (as I shall try to do in Chapter 4), it seems reasonable for one to begin by trying to find out how individual human languages came into existence. But, in most cases, such a search would be futile. Mod ern Italian, for example, would be found to fade back into a maze of dialects deriving ultimately from Latin, which developed out of Indo European, which sprang, presumably, from some antecedent language now wholly inaccessible to us; :md at no point in the continuous transmission of language could we name a date and say, "Here Latin ended," or "Here Italian began."
But there is one class of languages for which we can point, with reasonable accuracy, to the year of birth: we can say that before 1530, there was no Sao Tomense; before 1650, no Sranan; before 1690, no Haitian Creole; and before 1880, no Hawaiian Creole. And yet two or three decades after those dates, those languages existed. Of course no one would claim that these languages were quite devoid of ancestry; indeed, their relationships with several sets of putative ancestors have been and continue to be a subject of controversy (for a critical sum mary and bibliography of the relevant literature, see Bickerton 1976).
\
2 ROOTS OF LANGUAGE PIDGIN INTO CREOLE 3
But even controversy could not exist unless the lines of descent were, at the very least, considerably more obscure than they are for most other languages.
Creole languages arose as a direct result of European colonial
expansion. Between 1500 and 1900, there came into existence, on tropical islands and in isolated sections of tropical littorals, small, autocratic, rigidly stratified societies, mostly engaged in monoculture (usually of sugar), which consisted of a ruling minority from some European nation and a large mass of (mainly non-European) laborers, drawn in most cases from many different language groups. The early linguistic history of these enclaves is virtually unknown; it is generally assumed (but see Alleyne 1971, 1979) that speakers of different lan guages at first evolved some form of auxiliary contact-language, native to none of them (known as a pidgin ) , and that this language, suitably expanded, eventually became the native (or creole) language of the community which exists today. These creoles were in most cases different enough from any of the languages of the original contact situation to be considered "new" languages. Superficially, their closest resemblance was to their European parent, but this was mainly because the bulk of the vocabulary items were drawn from that source, and even here, there were extensive phonological and semantic shifts. In the area of syntax, features were much less easily traceable.
In general, the term creole is used to refer to any language which was once a pidgin and which subsequently became a native language ; some scholars have extended the term to any language, ex-pidgin or not, that has undergone massive structural change due to language contact (one who shall be nameless confessed to me that he did this solely to obtain access to a conference which, like most creole conferences, was held in an exotic tropical setting!). In fact, I think that even the traditional definition is too wide, since it covers a range of situations which may differ in kind rather than in degree.
Since my aim here is not to account for the origins of all lan guages known as creoles (which would be an absurd aim anyway since they do not constitute a proper set{ but rather to search for certain
fundamental properties of human language in general, my interests lie, not in creoles per se, but in situations where the normal continuity of language transmission is most severely disrupted. While it is true that the circumstances under which pidginization and creolization take place represent "a catastrophic break in linguistic tradition that is unparalleled" (Sankoff 1979:24), there are still a number of areas where the severity of that break was mitigated by other factors. Let us consider two quite different cases of such mitigation: Reunion Creole and Tok Pisin (a.k.a. Neo-Melanesian, New Guinea Pidgin, etc.).
One factor that would limit the extent of language disruption would be the presence of any large homogeneous linguistic group in the community-more especially if that group happened to consist of speakers of the dominant language. According to Chaudenson (1974), in Reunion during the first few decades of settlement nearly half the population consisted of native speakers of French ; in conse quence, although the resultant language bears the creole label, the distance between that language and French is much less than the distance between most creoles and their superstrates, while (more important still from the present viewpoint) the language differs in many respects from creoles formed where access to the superstrate was more restricted.
In New Guinea, the percentage of superstrate speakers was low, but the pidgin existed for several generations alongside the indigenous language before it began to acquire native speakers. Thus Tok Pisin was able to expand gradually, through normal use, rather than very rapidly, under the communicative pressure of a generation that had, for practical purposes, no other option available as a first language. The bilingual speakers of Tok Pisin had ongoing lives in their own languages and, perhaps more importantly still, in their own traditional communities; whereas in the classic creole situation, people had been torn from their traditional communities and forced into wholly novel communities in which the value of traditional languages was low or nil. The two situations are not commensurate, and we would expect
4 ROOTS OF LAN. GUAGE
to find, as we do, that while Tok Pisin differs from English much more than Reunion Creole does from French, it lacks, again, a number of the features found in the classic creole languages, and possesses a number of features which those creoles, in turn, do not share.
Accordingly, in the text that follows, I shall use the word creole
to refer to languages which:
Arose out of a prior pidgin which had not existed for more than a generation.
Arose in a population where not more than 20 percent were
native speakers of the dominant language and where the remaining 80 percent was composed of diverse language groups.
The first condition rules out Tok Pisin and perhaps other (e.g., Austra lian Aboriginal) creoles; the second rules out Reunion Creole and perhaps other creoles also (the varieties of Portuguese creoles that evolved in Asian trading enclaves such as Goa or Macao are possible candidates for exclusion under this condition). Given the above, I shall continue to refer to certain languages or groups oflanguages as "English creoles," "French creoles," etc.; this usage implies no conclusions as to the affiliations of these languages and is merely for convenience.
By limiting
our research
area in
this way
, it
becomes possible
to concentrate on
those situations
in which
the human
linguistic capacity
is stretched
to the
uttermost. As
I have
said, we
know little
or nothing of
the early
linguistic history
of most
creoles, but
what evidence
we do have
(e.g.,
Rens 1953,
for Sranan)
suggests that
they emerged
from the pidgin
stage fairly rapidly,
within twenty
or thirty
years after
first settlement of
the areas
concerned. Such
a time
span gives
space for
the first locally-born
generation to
come to
maturity, but
it hardly
gives space for
a stable,
systematic, and
referentially adequate
pidgin
to be
evolved in
a community
which might
initially speak
dozens of
mutually unintelligible
languages; certainly,
in the
one case
of which
we have direct
knowledge (Hawaii),
no stale,
systematic,
or referentially
PIDGIN INTO CREOLE 5
adequate pidgin had developed within that time frame, and there are no real grounds for supposing that the Hawaiian situation was any less favorahle to the development of such a pidgin than were the situations in other creole-forming regions. We can assume, therefore, that in each of these regions, immediately prior to creolization, there existed, just as there existed in Hawaii, a highly variable, extremely rudimentary language state such as has been sometimes described as a "jargon" or "pre-pidgin continuum" rather than a developed pidgin language. Since none of the available vernaculars would permit access to more than a tiny proportion of the community, and since the cultures and communities with which those vernaculars were associated were now receding rapidly into the past, the child born of pidgin-speaking parents would seldom have had any other option than to learn that rudi mentary language, however inadequate for human purposes it might he.
We should pause here to consider the position of such children, for no one else has done so, even in the vast literature on language acquisition. That position differs crucially from the position of children in more normal communities. The latter have a ready-made, custom· validated, referentially adequate language to learn, and mothers, elder siblings, etc., ready to help them learn it. The former have, instead, something which may be adequate for emergency use, but which is quite unfit to serve as anyone's primary tongue; which, by reason of its variability , does not present even the little it offers in a form that would permit anyone to learn it; and which the parent, with the best will in the world, cannot teach, since that parent knows no more of the language than the child (and will pretty soon know less). Every where else in the world it goes without saying that the parent knows more language than the child; here, if the child is to have an adequate language, he must speedily outstrip the knowledge of the parent. Yet every study of first-language acquisition that I know of assumes without question that the more general situation is universal; every existing theory of acquisition is based on the presupposition that there is always and everywhere an adequate language to be acquired.
6 ROOTS OF LANGUAGE PIDGIN INTO CREOLE 7
It is true that the situation I am describing is extremely rare and can indeed occur only once even for a creole language. However, the rarity or frequency of a phenomenon contains no clues as to its scientific importance.
The act of "expanding" the antecedent pidgin, which each
first creole generation has to undertake, involves, among other things, acquiring new rules of syntax. In the conventional wisdom, children are supposed to derive rules by processing input (with or without the help of some specific language-learning device) ; in this way, they arrive at a rule system similar to, if not identical with, that of their elders. If this were all children could do, then they would simply learn the pidgin, and there would be no significant gap between the generations. In Hawaii, at least, we have empirical proof that this did not happen-that the first creole generation produced rules for which there was no evidence in the previous generation's speech.
How can a child produce a rule for which he has no evidence? No one has answered this question; most people haven't even asked it; and yet, until it is answered, we cannot really claim to know any thing about how languages in general are acquired. For it violates both parsimony and common sense to suppose that children use one set of acquisition strategies for "normal" acquisition situations, and then switch to another set when they frnd themselves in a pidgin speaking community: parsimony because two explanations would be required where one should be adequate, and common sense because there is no way in which a child could tell what kind of community he had been born into, and therefore no way he could decide which
set of strategies to use.
I shall return to the topic of acquisition in Chapter 3; in the present chapter, I shall simply describe what happened in Hawaii when pidgin turned into creole.
For a century after the first European contact, the population of Hawaii consisted mainly of native Hawaiians, with a small but growing minority of native Englis speakers. A small but growing
minority of Hawaiians spoke English with varying degrees of profi ciency; the lower end of this spectrum acquired the name hapa-haole 'half-white'. Hapa-haole was not a true pidgin, or even a true pre pidgin, in the sense discussed above; rather it was a continuum of "foreigner's English," similar to Whinnom' s (1971) description of cocoliche. It was, apparently, limited to the towns, still hardly heard in country areas even in the 1870s. There was a small sugar industry, but the labor force was almost entirely Hawaiian, and, as far as one can discover, the plantation work-language was Hawaiian.
In 1876, a revision of U.S. tariff laws allowing the free importa tion of Hawaiian sugar caused the industry to increase its productivity by several hundred percent. The native Hawaiian population had so declined in numbers that workers had to be imported, first from China, and then from Portugal, Japan, Korea, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, etc. In a few years there came into existence a multilingual community that greatly outnumbered the former population, Hawaiian and haole alike.
A pidgin English was probably not the first, and certainly not the only, contact language used on the Hawaiian plantations after 1876. A pidgin based on Hawaiian and known as olelo pa'i'ai 'taro language' -so called because it allegedly originated with the Chinese, who largely took over taro growing from the native Hawaiians-was widely used in the last two decades of the 19th century (Bickerton 1977 i307-8) and perhaps for some years afterward, since one speaker, a Filipino, was still alive in the mid-1970s. So far, it has proved impos sible to determine whether pidgin English grew up alongside pidgin Hawaiian or whether the former grew out of the latter by a gradual relexiflcarion process. The two processes may not be mutually exclu sive, especially when we consider that population balances and other demographic factors differed widely from island to island. But one certain consequence of the existence of olelo pa'i'ai is that it delayed the development of any form of pidgin English, especially on the outer islands, where the Hawaiian language was strongest.
In 1973 and 1974, I and my team of assistants made recordings
8 ROOTS OF LA".IGUAGE PIDGIN INTO CREOLE 9
of several hundred hours of speech from both immigrant speakers of Hawaiian Pidgin English (HPE) and locally-born speakers of Hawaiian Creole English (HCE); this work is described in detail in Bickerton and Odo (1976), Bickerton and Giv6n (1976), and Bickerton (1977 ). The earliest immigrant arrival in the group we recorded was 1907, a time which , if our theory about the delayed development of HPE is correct, may have been only a few years after the beginning of HPE. The latest arrival was 1930. [n other words, a period of from forty three to sixty-six years had elapsed between our subjects' dates of arrival and our recordings. Can recordings made after such a long period give us an adequate idea of what HPE was like in the period
1907-1930?
Although it is widely held that au individual's speech changes little after maturity has been reached, this may not necessarily be true of second languages or contact languages. Pidginization is a ptocess, not a state, and it is therefore possible that at least some of our subjects may now speak differently from the way they spoke when they first arrived in Hawaii, even though the vast majority were already adults at that time. However, one thing is certain. If their version of HPE has changed in those intervening years, then it mnst be more complex in structure and less subject to idiosyncratic or ethnic-group variation than it was in the years that immediately followed their arrival. It is unthinkable that after several decades of life in a community that was steadily becoming more integrated their version of HPE should have grown less complex or more idiosyncratic. We must therefore assume that either their HPE now adequately represe11ts the HPE of the early pidginization period, or that the latter was even more primitive and more unstable than the versions they use today.
But even if modem HPE represents early HPE quite accurately,
it does not follow that all HPE speakers are equally good guides to the state of HPE as it was when creolization took place. On the basis of evidence discussed at length in Bickerton ( 1977 ), we can place the time of creolization somewhere around 1910, and certainly no later than 1920. There are considerable differences between the HPE spoken by
\
the earliest arrivals among our subjects and that spoken by those who arrived in the 1920s. The former is considerably more rudimentary in its structure; the complications that developed after 1920 could have been due to internal developments in HPE, but were more probably
caused by feedback from the newly-developed HCE, whose earliest speakers would have come to maturity by 1920 if not before (this issue, too, is explicitly dealt with in Bickerton [1977 :Chapter 4]). We shall therefore make the reasonable assumption that at the time of creolization HPE was either adequately represented by our recordings of earlier (pre-1920) immigrants, or it was at a still more primitive
level of development.
At first glance, the second possibility might seem hard to credit. The HPE of the older surviving speakers is both highly restricted and highly variable. The main source of instability is first-language influ ence. Labov (1971) claimed that these transference-governed versions of HPE were the idiosyncratic inventions of social isolates; our much more widely-based research indicates that instead they represent one of the earliest stages in the pidginization process in which the more isolated the speakers, the more likely they are to become fossilized. However, speakers who produced such versions were by no means all socially isolated, and in particular, we noted that speakers of more evolved versions of HPE would sometimes relapse into this mode when they became excited or when they had to deal with complex or un familiar topics (the speaker who produced !121 below also produced, in the middle of a long and exciting narrative, !21).
Typical of very early HPE as produced by speakers born in Japan are the following:
/1/ mista karsan-no tokoro tu eika sel shite Mr. Carson-POSS place two acre sell do 'I sold two acres to Mr. Carson's place'
/2/ sore kara kech shite k ara pul ap and then catch do then pull up
'When he had caught it, he pulled it up'
10 ROOTS OF LANGUAGE PIDGIN INTO CREOLE 11
In these examples, the italicized lexical items are Japanese, and ana phora is maintained by zero forms rather than by pronouns. In I 1/ the structure (with both direct and indirect objects preceding the verb and the auxiliary following the main verb) represents direct transference from Japanese syntax. Example /2/ can hardly be said to have anything recognizable as structure; lexical items from the English and Japanese lexicons are simply strung together. But what is striking about these two sentences is that six out of the seven Japanese morphemes are grammatical, not lexical, items; it is as if the speakers felt the need for some kind of grammatical glue with which to stick their sentences together, and perforce used the only brand available to them.
·Speakers who immigrated into areas where there was a large native-Hawaiian population show a rather different tendency ; here, it is Hawaiian rather than native-language vocabulary that is mixed with English items:
/3/ ifu laik meiki, mo beta mak e tairn, mani no kaen hapai
if like make, more better die time, money no can carry
'If you wanted to build (a temple), you should do it just before you die--you can't take it with you!'
I 4I Luna, Im hapai? Hapai awl, hemo awl Foreman, who carry ? Carry all, cut all
'Who'll carry it, boss? Everyone'll cut it and everyone'll carry it'
Example /3/ was uttered by a Japanese speaker, /4/ by a Filipino speaker; note that the predominantly OV syntax of the former is replaced by a predominantly VS syntax in the latter, reflecting the
That the macaronic elements in these examples may represent a deliber ate str:tegy on the part of speakers is suggested by the following perceptive comment from an old Hawaiian woman:
15/ So we use the Hawaiian and Chinese together in one sentence, see? And they ask me if that's a Hawaiian word, I said no, maybe that's a Japanese word we put it in, to make a sentence with a Hawaiian word. And the Chinese the same way too, in order to make a sentence for them to understand you.
In other w.ords, in the original linguistic meltincr pot from which HPE venrnally issued, the more skilled speakers acquired a core vocabulary
m which the commonest items, both lexical and grammatical, might be represented by forms drawn from three or four languages. Small won der that a Japanese woman, asked if she spoke English , answered: "No, haf""har:a [Hawaiia;t '.half-half'] shite [Japanese 'do'] "-i.e., 'I speak a
nuxture -and added (m Japanese), "I never know whether I'm speaking one thing or the other."
Even at a subsequent stage of pidginization, represented by speaker whose vocabulary is drawn predominantly from English, sntacti features characteristic of their native languages will still distmgmsh, for example, Japanese from Filipino speakers. The former continue to produce sentences such as /6/ and /7/, with final verbs:
/6/ tumach mani mi tink kechi do plenty money I think catch though
'I think he earns a lot of money, though'
speaker's native Visayan. Here, however, all the Hawaiian items carry lexical meaning, in contrast with the Japanese items in /1/ and /2/; this lends support to the claim that even as late as the 1910s, in some
/7/
da pua pip!awl poteito it
'The poor people ate only potatoes'
areas, either olelo pa'i'ai was still dominant, or its relexiflcation by
English was still far from complete.
Certainly examples /1/-/4/ suggest an extreme instability in the language model that would confron the first locally-born generation.
Filipinos, however, often produce sentences in which verbs or predicate adjectives precede their subjects:
/8/ wok had dis pipl
'These people work hard'
12 ROOTS OF LANGUAGE PIDGIN INTO CREOLE 13
/9/ mo plaeni da ilokano en da tagalog
'Ilocanos were more numerous than Tagalogs'
The patterns of /6/-/9/ were probably never categorical for any speaker; all the speakers in onr sample showed some SVO synt'."". Variation, however, was fairly unpredictable; Japanese speakers vaned
between 30 percent and 60 percent of SOV sentences, although the figures for particular sentence types might range between 1? ercem
and 90 percent (see Bickerton and Giv6n [1976] for full details!> while among Filipinos, percentages of VS structures ranged between 15 percent and 50 percent in sentences where S was a full noun rather than a pronoun. On the other hand, VS sentences om Japanese speake:s d OV sentences from Filipino speakers, while extremely rare, did
articles, Japanese speakers rarely used either definite or indefinite; Filipino speakers, on the other hand, often over-generalized the definite article, as in /9/ above. While both groups relied on zero anaphora more than English does, pronouns were far more frequent among Filipino speakers. In short, anyone (in particular a child) trying to learn HPE would have encountered formidable obstacles to even figuring out what the rules of HPE were supposed to be.
But its variability was by no means the only obstacle to child acquisition of HPE. The presence of two conflicting models, A and B, still leaves the learner three theoretical choices: learn A, learn B, or learn some mixture of A and B. But when neither of the models, nor the two together, constitutes an adequate variety of human language, the problem is of a different order altogether.
:cur from time to time. Since the Japanese and the Filipinos consti
Let us be quite clear as to what the deficiencies of HPE were, for
tuted the two largest immigrant groups, a child in Hawaii who sought to learn basic word order by inductive processes alone would have ended up in a state of total bewilderment.
Other features besides word order distinguish Japanese from
Filipino speakers. Among Japanese, when-clauses were frequently expressed by compound nominals such as:
/10/ as-bihoa-stei-taim us-before-stay-time
'when we used to live here'
Filipinos never used such expressions, except. fr sma':'. tim 'when I was young', which became a universal HPE 1d10m. Fil1pmo peakers inserted pronouns between most full-noun subjects and their verbs,
for example:
/11/ josafin brada hi laik hapai mi
'Josephine's brother wants to take me (with him)'
Japanese speakers seldom if ever ued this structure. With regard to
it has been claimed (e.g., Samarin 1971) that anything at all can be said in a pidgin. There is a sense in which this is probably correct, even of an immature pidgin like HPE, provided we do not count the cost of saying it. Take the following remarkable speech:
/12/ samtaim gud rod get, samtalm, olsem hen get, enguru ['angle'] get, no? enikain seim. olsem hyuman laif, olsem. gud rodu get, enguru get, mauntin get-no? awl, enikain, stawmu get, nais dei get-olsem. enibadi, mi olsem, smawl taim.
'Sometimes there's a good road, sometimes there's, like, bends, corners, right? Everything's like that. Human life'sjust like that. There's good roads, there's sharp corners, there's mountains right? All sorts of things, there's storms, nice days--it's like that for everybody, it was for me, too, when I was young'
This philosophic statement would be a striking piece of rhetoric in any language. But it is an achievement against the grain of the language, so to speak; the speaker, a retired bus driver (which probably accounts for his choice of imagery), triumphs by sheer force of imagination over
14 ROOTS OF LANGUAGE
the minimal vocabulary and narrow range of structural options within which he is obliged to work,
Similarly, HPE does not prevent speakers from finding ingenious ways of replacing lexical items which they lack or are unsure of; here is
PIDGIN INTO CREOLE 15
/15/ aena tu macha ehuren, samawl ehuren, haus mani pei
and too much children, small children, house money pay
'And I HAD too many children, small children, I HAD to pay the rent' (Korean speaker)
one subject who cannot recall library:
/13/ rai ., . rai . . . ano buk eniting boro dekiru tokoro
Ii. , . li. ..that book anything borrow can place
'Li . . . Li , ..That place where you can borrow any of the books'
/16/
bihoa mil no moa hilipino no nating
before mill no more Filipino no nothing
'Before the mill WAS BUILT, THERE WERE no Filipinos here at all' (Japanese speaker)
If it were the case that children simply induced rules from input,
It is not absolutely necessary, for communicative purposes, that a language have either an extensive vocabulary or a variety of syntactic structures; but the goals of language, whether social communication or mental computation, seem to be better served if a language has these things. HPE lacks, wholly or partially, many of the building blocks which all native languages possess. Among HPE speakers who arrived prior to 1920, the following features are largely or completely missing: consistent marking of tense, aspect, and modality; relative clauses; movement rules, embedded complements, in particular infinitival con structions; articles, especially indefinite. On the rare occasion when such features do appear, they often do so in forms modeled directly on the speaker's native language-for example, the relative clauses that precede, rather than follow, their head-nouns that are sometimes produced by Japanese speakers:
/ 14/ aen luk laik pankin kain get
and look like pumpkin kind get
'And there were some that looked like pumpkins'
For the most part, however, sentences would consist of short strings of nouns and verbs paratactically linked. Often even verbs would be omitted, as in the following two examples:
'
one might suppose that when children were born to HPE speakers they learned the grammars of their parents. If their parents were Filipinos, they would learn the rules characteristic of Filipino speakers; if their parents were Japanese, they would learn the rules characteristic of Jp":'ese speakers, and so on. One might argue that when Japanese and Fil1prno children went to school they met one another and ironed out their differences; but if this, or something like it, did rake place, it must ave had mre to do with their being children than with their being rn contact with one another. Fifty years of contact were not enough to
erase language-group differences from the speech of adults, And while similar phenomena have been observed among children of immigrant groups on the U.S. mainland, it must be remembered that .the latter
had a ready-made target, while the first creole generation in Hawaii did not.
Whatever processes were involved, the erasure of group differ ences in that generation was complete. Even other locally-born persons cannot determine the ethnic background of an HCE speaker by his speech alone, although the same persons can readily identify that of an HPE speaker by listening to him for a few seconds.
Now it is true that we could construct an argument similar to that already constructed for HPE speakers. The reader will recall the claim that while the contemporary speech of old HPE speakers may be the same as, or more developed than, their speech shortly after time of
16 ROOTS OF LANGUAGE
arrival, it could hardly be less developed. Similarly, one might claim that older HCE speakers do not necessarily speak now as they spoke in their childhood or early maturity; that, again, it would be absurd to suggest that they then spoke a variety more developed than they speak now; and that, therefore, their speech may have changed and become considerably more complex since they reached adulthood. Indeed, on this showing, they might have spoken , as children, varieties as rudimentary and as ethnic-tongue-influenced as their parents did; subsequently, and very gradually, they could have developed the more stable, yet more complex, variety of!anguage that they use today. If this were true, the apparently sudden break between HPE and HCE would be a misleading artifact of the analysis, produced by back projection from synchronic data.
Since we lack direct evidence from the period in question, this argument cannot be conclusively disproved. However, it is an im plausible one, and for the following reason. If the argument is correct , then the homogeneity of modern HCE must have come about by a gradual leveling process in which group differences were gradually removed through intergroup contacts. What were the critical differ ences between the immigrant and first locally-born generations? Not, apparently, bilingualism versus monolingualism, since all the older, locally-born subjects we interviewed spoke at least one other language besides HCE when they were children. The only significant difference between the two generations is that the first encountered HPE as adults, while the second encountered it as small children.
Similar arguments can be mounted with regard to the greater complexity of HCE. Again, we cannot prove empirically that this complexity did not result from gradual increment. If we assume that it did, however, we have to explain why HPE did not also become more complex; and we can only conclude, again, that such an explanation must lie in the difference between language-learning by adults and language-learning by children.
Finally, as
we will
see in
Chapter 2,
the forms
and structures
arrived at
by HCE
resemble far
beyond the
scope of
chance the
forms
'
PIDGIN INTO CREOLE 17
and structures arrived at by a variety of other creole languages, often with substrata very different from Hawaii's (and from one another's too). It defies belief that a language formed by the leveling of several substratum-influenced versions of a pidgin should exhibit the degree of identity that will be illustrated with languages so diverse in their origins, all of which must have evolved in a similar manner; the odds against this happening, unless some set of external guiding principles was condi tioning the result, must be fantastic. It seems reasonable, therefore, to assume that the gap between HPE and HCE that is reflected in our data is a gen uine phenomenon, accounted for by extremely abrupt changes :'hich took place while the first creole generation was growing
to maturity.
I shall now examine some of the substantive differences between HPE and HCE in the following five areas:
movement rules
articles
verbal auxiliaries
d) for-to complementization
e) relativization and pronoun-copying
I claimed above that HPE had no movement rules. In fact, HPE could not have had any movement rules if we use the term in a rather restricted sense to cover processes such as those which convert sen· tences like /17/ and /19/ into sentences like /18/ and /20/:
{17/ I spoke to John.
/18/ It was John that I spoke to.
/19/ Mary loaned us a book.
/20/ The one who loaned us a book was Mary.
Rules of this kind are generally associated with certain functions, e.g.,
18 ROOTS OF LA',)!GUAGE
that of focusing one particular constituent of a sentence, and they perform this function in some English cases by adding structure but always by changing the basic, unmarked word order of the sentence.
We saw that in HPE there were several possible sentence orders: SVO, for all speakers sometimes; SOV, very often for Japanese speak ers; and VS, quite often for Filipino speakers. However, sfuce Japanese speakers hardly ever produced VS sentences, and Filipino speakers hardly ever produced SOV sentences, the use of the non-SVO structures could hardly indicate focns or any similar emphatic device; they served merely as (probably unintentional) signals of ethnicity. Even within a
group-say; the Japanese-it could hardly be the case that SVO (or SOV) represented an unmarked order, while SOV (or SVO) represented a marked order. For instance, if SOV were the basic order, and SVO a marked order, those speakers who produced only 30 percent SOV would be using their marked order more than twice as often as their basic order. But if the relationship were reversed, the result would be just as unlikely for those speakers who produced 60 percent SOV. If there were two groups, one with basic SOV and marked SVO, and the other with basic SVO and marked SOV, then it would become impossible for the listener to be sure whether contrastive emphasis was or was not intended, and the whole purpose of movement rules would be lost..We can therefore assume that differences in word order among HPE speakers are not the result of movement rules but are due to a gradual transition from VS or SOV orders, unmarked in the speakers' native languages, to the equally . unmarked SVO which characterizes almost all contact languages.
In HCE, the situation is quite different. HCE is homogeneous (except to the extent that it has been increasingly influenced by English in recent years) both across and within all groups irrespective of the parents' language background. For all speakers, without question, the basic, unmarked word order is SVO. All speakers, however, have rules that will move either objects-/21/, /22/-or predicates-/23/, /24/-to the beginning of the sentence:
\
PIDGIN INTO CREOLE 19
/21/ eni k ain lanwij ai no kaen spik gud
'! can't speak any kind of language well'
/22/ o, daet wan ai si 'Oh, I saw that one'
/23/ es wan ting baed dakain go futbawl 'That football stuff is a had thing'
/24/ daes leitli dis pain chri 'These pine trees are recent'
Object-fronting occurs only when the speaker wishes to contrast one NP with another, or to contradict some inference that has been or might be drawn from a previous utterance. This can be shown if we look at some context for /22/, for instance:
/25/ Interviewer: You ever saw any ghost ?
MJ7 SM: no-ai no si.
Interviewer: What about, you know, dakine fireball? MJ75M: o, daet wan ai si.
The interviewer is referring to akualele, supernatural fireballs, allegedly controlled by members of the kahuna or Hawaiian priestly caste. MJ75M ( the letters and numbers indicate: sex, masculine; ethnicity, Japanese; age, 75; and island of residence, Maui, respectively) has just denied knowledge of supernatural entities and uses object-fronting
to mark the exception to this denial, as soon as it is brought to his attention.
Predicate-fronting occurs when a predicate that contains new information is introduced in conjunction with a subject which has been explicitly stated or implied in the immediately preceding discourse. This can be shown by extended context for /24 /:
/26/ bifoa don haev mach chriz hia. in daet hil dea no moa chriz.
daes leitli dis pain chri.
'There weren't many trees here before. There were no trees
20 ROOTS OF LANGUAGE
at all on that hill over there. These pine trees (that you now see there) were planted recently'
Here, the speaker realizes that what he said in the first two sentences may seem plainly false in light of what the interviewer can see before him. Since trees, although their presence has been denied, have been established as a topic, he can emphasize the recency of the presently visible trees' appearance by fronting the predicate,
This congruence between movement rule and discourse feature
is, of course, peculiar to HCE; one cannot fmd any similar congruence between discourse and variant ordering in HPE. In fact, the result of the HCE rules is a series of orderings which differs markedly from the possible orderings of HPE, both in that it contains orders which HPE does not permit, and in that it does not contain orders which HPE does permit. The situation is shown in Table 1.1:
Order HPE HCE
SVO yes yes
sov yes no
vs yes yes
VOS no yes
osv no yes
ovs no yes
Table 1.1: Word order in HPE and HCE
The SOV order which is the commonest among older Japanese HPE speakers does not exist in HCE. While VS may occur in both HPE and HCE, its source is different in each case: in HPE, it stems from the retention of verb-first ordering; in HCE, from the operation of a regular rule. That rule, if it applies to transitive sentences, yields VOS order in HCE since objects and other constituents of the verb-phrase move
with the verb:
\
PIDGIN INTO CREOLE 21
/27/ no laik plei futbawl, dis gaiz
'These guys don't want to play football'
But although VOS is a possible order in Philippine languages, it does not emerge in HPE, possibly because of the absence of either case marking or consistent intonation to distinguish the roles of the two NPs.
As for the two remaining orders, OSV and OVS, which are
present in HCE but not in HPE, the £rst arises through object-fronting, while the second can occur when both object- and predicate-fronting apply to the same sentences. The result, though infrequent, is occasion ally found and is judged grammatical by native speakers:
/28/ difren bilifs dei get, sam gaiz 'Some guys have different beliefs'
There is no way in which the sentence orders that are produced, or the rules which produce them, could have been acquired by the first creole generation from their pidgin-speaking parents. Moreover, even if we assume extensive bilingualism in that generation, those rules could not have been derived from either the substrate languages, or from English. Thtee substrate languages (Chinese, Portuguese, Spanish), as well as English , have underlying SVO order, bnt Chinese and English do not permit verb-first or predicate-fast sentences, except for one or two highly marked structures like English left-dislocated pseudo clefts (Told the landlord , that's what he did). Portuguese and Spanish are freer in their ordering, tolerating certain types of verb-first sen tences, but the equivalents of VOS sentences like /27/ and OVS sen tences like /28/ would be ungrammatical in these languages. Conversely, the common Iberian VSX, as exemplified by Port uguese, would be ungrammatical in HCE:
/29/ Chegaram os generais do exercito anoite no Rio arrived the generals of-the army last-night in-rhe Rio 'The army generals arrived in Rio last night'
22 ROOTS OF LANGUAGE
Of course, one might always say something like, "All the struc tures of HCE are found in at least one of the languages in contact (it would be bizarre if they weren't!] , and therefore HCE merely repre sents a random mix of the structures available to children of various groups, through either the pidgin or their own ethnic tongues." If anyone seriously believed that a language could be built by random mixture, this answer might be satisfactory. But it would not explain why one of the commonest (SOV) orders should be excluded-still less why the particular mixture illustrated in Table 1.1 should have been chosen, rather than one of the many other possible combinations. However, it can hardly be accidental if that particular distribution turns out to be exactly what is generated if one assumes basic SVO order (which is virtually mandatory when you have no other means of mark ing the two major cases) plus a rule which moves either of the two
major constituents, NP and VP, to sentence-initial position. 1 We may
therefore claim that the rules which move NPs and VPs cannot have been acquired inductively by the original HCE speakers, but must, in some sense of the term, have been "invented" by them ah ovo.
Next, let us look at articles. These appear sporadically and unpredictably in HPE; typical of early (mainly Japanese) speakers is the 92-year-old 1907 arrival who produced only three indefinite articles (out of 32 that would have been required by English rules of reference, i.e., 9.4 percent) and seven definite articles (out of a total of 40. that English rules would have required, i.e., 17.5 percent). Filipino speakers, on the other hand, generalized the definite articles to many environ ments in which English does not require them, for example: with generic NPs, as in 191 above; where there is only one possible refer ent, as in /30/ or /31/; where there is a clearly nonspedfic referent, as in /32/; or where noncount nouns are involved, as in /33/:
/30/ hi get da hawaian waif 'He has a Hawaiian wife'
\
PIDGIN INTO CREOLE 23
/31/ istawri pram da gad 'God's story'
/32/ no kaen du nating abaut da eniting insai da haus
'They can't do anything about anything inside the house'
/33/ oni tek tu slais da bred
'I only take two slices of bread'
HCE speakers, however, follow neither the under-generalization of the Japanese speaker nor the over-generalization of the Filipino speaker. The definite article da is used for all and only specific-refer ence NPs that can be assumed known to the listener:
/34/ aefta da boi, da wan wen jink daet milk, awl da maut soa 'Afterward, the mouth of the boy who had drunk that milk was
all sore'
The indefinite article wan is used for all and only specific-reference NPs that can be assumed unknown to the listener (typically, first-mention use):
/35/ higet wan blaek buk. daet buk no du eni gud
'He has a black book. That book doesn't do any good'
All other NPs have no article and no marker of plurality. This category includes generic NPs, NPs within the scope of negation-i.e., clearly nonspecific NPs-and cases where, while a specific referent may exist, the exact identity of that referent is either unknown to the speaker or irrelevant to the point at issue. Examples include:
/36/ dag smat
'The dog is smart' (in answer to the question, "Which is smarter,
the horse or the dog?")
137I yang fela dei no du daet 'Young fellows don't do that'
24 ROOTS OF LAN'GUAGE
I 38{ poho ai neva bai big wan
'It's a pity l didn't buy a big one'
/ 39/ bat nobadi gon get jab
'But nobody will get a job'
{ 40/ hu go daun frs iz luza
'The one who goes down first is the loser'
/41/ kaenejan waif, ae, get 'He has a Canadian wife'
/42/ mi ai get raesh
'As for me, I get a rash'
/43/ as tu bin get had taim reizing dag
'The two of us used to have a hard time raising dogs'
These zero-marked forms would be marked three diffe.rent ways in English: with the in /36/, /40/; with a in /38/, /39/, /41/,
/42/; wi th zero, but followed by plural -s, in /37 /, /43/. But note
that the absence of plural marking in the last two cases certainly does not stem from any more general absence of pl uralization in HCE; specific NPs with plural reference are always appropriately marked in HCE (although not in HPE), except where numerals or other clear signs of plurality are already present.
The fact that HCE unites in a single category what English treats as discrete categories has led to some curious analyses, such as that of Perlman (1973:99) who writes: "(/)s that mark generic singular NP should be distinguished from those that mark indefinite singular ones. The distinction may be quite difficult to make. In such cases as they go beer parlor, Ewa was never using crane that date, that is hund red-pound bag, those days they get icebox, and olden days we gotta ride train, it may actually be neutralized; however, I have dis tinguished generic from indefinite where possible and discarded un certain cases like the preceding."
In reality, all Perlman's cases and those cited above have in common the fact that no specific reference is intended, or, in most cases, even possible; and the semantc feature nonspecific happens to be
PIDGIN INTO CREOLE 25
slurred by both generics and what Perlman calls "indefinite singular." That he uses the word "singular" at all in this context is enough to show that he is looking at his data through English spectacles. English has an obligatory number distinction; every NP has to be either singular or plural. HCE does not have an obligatory number distinction, or rather it has three numbers-singular, plural, and nonspecific (number less). Thus, while to the English speaker raesh in /42/ is clearly singular, while dag in /43/ is clearly plural, HCE speakers treat both cases as unmarked for number, because both are nonspedfic: the rash, because no particular rash is being referred to-simply the usual consequence when the speaker uses a certain brand of soap; the dogs, because it was not one particular dog or group of dogs that gave the speaker trouble, but rather the business of dog-raising in general.
We shall come back to nonspecifidty in each of the next three chapters; for the present, we only need to ask where the specific nonspecific, marked-unmarked, distinction that is incorporated in the HCE grammar came from. Based on the evidence already shown, it could not have come from HPE. If HCE speakers had followed the Japanese version, they would have marked far fewer NPs than they do, and zero marking would have been assigned to at least some specifics. If they had followed the Filipino model, thev, would have had far fewer
zeros, and some definite articles would have been assigned to non
specific NPs; compare, for instance, /30/ with /41/. A mixing strategy "Use more articles than Japanese HPE speakers, fewer than Filiplno speakers"-would have achieved roughly the right numerical propor tions but, if used alone, would hardly have arrived at the rigorous semantic distinction that all HCE speakers in fact make.
As the influence of the original languages in contact, the glosses for /36/-{43/ show that English can hardly have been a model. Of the substrate languages, many do not have articles at all. Of those that do, none show the same distribution of zero forms; Portuguese and Hawaiian allow, to a varying extent, zero-marked, number-neutral NPs in object position, but demand articles for subject generics like that in /36/. Indeed, those who believe in the strength of substrate
26 ROOTS OF LANGUAGE
influence might note that the speaker who produced /36/, even after a generic with a definite article had been presented to him by his inter viewer, was a 79-year-old pure-blooded Hawaiian who had. spoken Hawaiian as a child.2 We must conclude, as with word order, that the zero marking of nonspecifics was an HCE "invention," and one firmly rooted enough to override counterevid.ence from other languages known to its speakers.
Next, let us examine verbal auxiliaries. HCE has an auxiliary which marks tense, bin (which sometimes takes the form wen, derived from it by regular phonological rules); an auxiliary which marks modal ity, go (sometimes gon) ; and an auxiliary which marks aspect, stei. I shall not discuss the first two here as we will return to a fuUer discus sion of creole tense-modality-aspect (henceforth TMA) systems in Chapter 2. The aspect marker stei will give us a clearer view of how creole creativity works.
Bin and go (at least as surface forms, though not with their HCE
meanings) occur sporadically and unpredictably in .HPE, but sti does not-at least not as an auxiliary. It does, however, occur as a mam verb, taking locative complements:
/44/ mi iste nalehu tu yia
'I was in Nalehu for two years'
Jn all
our recordings
of pre-1920
immigrants (the
only ones
who could possibly
have provided
input to
the creolization
process) there
were only seven
sentences in
which stei
preceded
another verb.
When a feature
that occurs
so frequently
in HCE
occurs with
such vanishing
rarity in
HPE, there
clearly exists
the possibility
that it
was invented
by HCE speakers
and was
only afterward
adopted by
some HPE
speakers who, as
was suggested
earlier, are
hardly likely
to have
lived through
a half-century without
any
addition
to their
grammars. But
let
us assume
the contrary
and ask,
fu:st, whether
the occurrences
of stei
represent
\
PIDGIN INTO CREOLE 27
a true auxiliary, or whether the sentences contain mere sequences of two main verbs; and second, whether uses such as these could have provided evidence for the HCE speaker to develop a true auxiliary with nonpunctual (progressive plus habitual) meaning. The seven sentences are:
/45/ haus, haus ai stei go in, jaepan taim.
/46/ al srei kuk.
/47 / mi papa stei help.
/48/ aen istei kam-i kam draib in i ka.
/49/ mai brad.a hi stei make hia.
/50/ oni tu yia mi ai stei wrk had.
/51/ samtaim wan dei stei gat twentipai baeg.
I have not provided glosses since everything turns on what the sentences mean,. and what they mean is far from transparent. If /45/ were an HCE utterance, stei go in would mean something like 'kept entering',
which is improbable here; the .most likely meaning, in context, is that the speaker, when she was a girl in Japan, seldom used to leave the house. In the latter case, stei would be the main verb with the meaning
'stay', while go in would probably have been learned as an undifferenti ated chunk meaning something like 'inside'. In /46/, too, the second "verb" may not really be a verb either; kuk could represent the noun cook, in which case the sentence would mean simply 'I was a cook'. Sentence /47/ could represent verb serialization as easily as auxiliary plus-verb; 'I stayed 0J1d helped my father' or 'l stayed to help my father' are as plausible as glosses, in context, as 'I was helping my father'. Sentences /48/ and /49/ could contain auxiliaries···the reformu lation of /48/ makes it impossible to tell what was intended-but in both cases, punctual events are referred to; the most probable glosses are 'He drove up in his car' and 'My brother died here', respectively. But /49/ is puzzling since the Hawaiian verb make alone would mean 'died', while stei make would mean literally 'is (or was) dead', which in conjunction with here makes little sense.
28 ROOTS OF LANGUAGE
The only sentences that could have any kind of nonpunctual meaning are / 50/ and /51/. Sentence / 50[ is most like an HCE sentence with its suggestion of durative activity. Sentence / 51[ is more problema
PIDGIN INTO CREOLE 29
/54/ Present habitual:
yu no waet dei stei kawl mi, dakain-kawl mi gad
'You know what they call me, that bunch ? They call me God'
tic-it could be a past habitual with a zero impersonal subject ('Some times they used to collect twenty-five bags a day') or some kind of premature attempt at a passive with the quasi-copular stei ('Sometimes twenty-five bags were collected in a day').
If the input to the first creole generation was as chaotic as this and, as we saw, it could hardly have been less chaotic although it may well have been more chaotic-··it is impossible to see how children of that generation could have distilled any kind of regular rule out of it,
/55/
Past habitual:
da meksikan no tel mi nau, da gai laik daunpeimen-i stei tel mi, o, neks wik, hi kamin, kamin
'Now the Mexican didn't tell me that the guy wanted a down payment-he kept telling me, oh, next week it's coming it;s con1ing' '
A further difference between the HPE examples cited above and
still less the particular rule that they did in fact derive. But if, as is highly possible, sentences such as /45/-/51/ would not have been produced by any HPE speaker prior to 1920, and in fact represent a case of partial imperfect learning of HCE rules by those speakers (a
possibility that I shall document in another area later in this chapter J,
then the achievement of the first creole generation becomes still more mysterious, since it must have been completely ex nihilo.
For if we look at the stei + V sentences of HCE speakers, we find
no ambiguous cases and no reference to single punct ual events. All their uses of stei as auxiliary fall into what an English speaker would probably describe as four categories-present continuous, past con tinuous, present habit ual, and past habit ual-but these four categories, as I have demonstrated elsewhere (Bickerton 1975:Chapter 2), really constitute a single nonpunctual category, semantically opposed to a punctual category expressing single nondurative actions or events:
/52/ Present continuous:
ai no kea hu stei hant insai dea, ai gon hunt
'l don't care who's hiinting in there, I'm going to hunt'
/ 53/ Past continuous:
wail wi stei paedl, jaen stei put wata insai da kanu-hei, da san av a gan haed sink!
'While we
were paddling,
John was
letting water
into the
canoe hey, the
son-of-a-gun
had sunk
it!'
he many hundreds of stei sentences we recorded from HCE speakers
is that out of the seven examples, two conjoined stei with predicates gat and make-with which it is never conjoined in HCE. This is because both are perceved as stative verbs, and in HCE, nonpunctual aspec t cannot be applied to statives: *shi stei no da ansa is as ungrammatical as its English equivalent, *she is knowing the answer. It is true that on one of our glosses of /51/ gat is not stative; but then it would not be used to express collect by an HCE speaker, for whom gat is limited to an alternative form for get 'have'.
How could HCE speakers have invented the stei + V form? Stei
is common as a locative in modern HPE, but there is some doubt
:Whether it was so common at the time of creole formation. Examples m Nagara (1972), drawn from data collected from very old speakers decade earlier, contain only stap as a locative, and the oldest speaker
m ou: wn sur;ey, who arrived prior to 1910, also has only stap. Thus lt 1s conceivable that even the locative use of stei was acquired by HPE speakers from HCE speakers. However, I would think it more likely that stei was a low-frequency variant around 1910 and that HCE speakers selected it over stap because, semantically, stei was a more appropriate expression for durativity.
Locativ expressions are a common source of nonpunct ual markers: for mstance, forms such as I am working derived originally from I am AT working-main verb be plus locative preposition plus
30 ROOTS OF LANGUAGE PIDGIN INTO CREOLE 31
gerund-which gave rise first to the form I'm a-working (still found in some conservative areas, e.g., West Virginia) and then, via phono logical reduction and syntactic reanalysis, to the modern Aux + V + ing. These processes in English took several centuries to produce a result which HCE must have produced almost instantly.
Again, we will look in vain for any substratum language which unites all the ingredients which make up HCE nonpunctual: preverbal free morpheme, semantic range inclusive of both progressive and habi tual, indifference to the past-nonpast distinction. Many substratum languages express aspect via bound morphemes, or by reduplication (e.g., Philippine languages-it is surely surprising, in view of the fre quency with which "reduplication" is hailed as a universal creole characteristic, that HCE speakers did not avail themselves of this particular resource!). Hawaiian uses free morphemes, but these are placed both before and after the verb; Chinese uses preverbal free morphemes, but semantically there is hardly any point of resemblance between the HCE and Chinese TMA systems. Perhaps the closest form to stei, semantically, is Japanese -te iru/-te ita; these forms cover (very roughly ) the same semantic range as stei. However, it is the discontinuous segment -te i- which carries nonpunctual meaning;
-ru and -ta signify nonpast and past, respectively, and nonpunctuality cannot be marked without marking one or the other of them. Thus, the Japanese form satisfies neither the first nor the third characteristic of stei. To assume Japanese influence on stei would be to assume that a TMA system can be put together like a jigsaw puzzle;3 indeed, the implicit supposition that all languages are like erector sets which can be dismantled, cannibalized, and put together again in new combin,.,. tions lies at the heart of all substratum arguments.
Our fourth area involves a particular type of sentential comple mentation. It has already been mentioned that sentence embedding of any kind is virtually nonexistent in HPE. Certainly there are no examples of anything resembling English for-to complementat ion,
\
whether for is obligatorily present /56/, optionally present /57/, or obligatorily deleted /58/:
/56/ Mary bought this for you to read.
/57/ Mary prefers (for) Bill to go.
/58/ Mary prefers (*for) to go.
HCE does have sentential complements, but these are marked not by to but by fo (presumably derived from English for ) and go; the precise distribution of these will be discussed shortly.
First, we must see what, if anything, HCE speakers could have learned from HPE. Fo is found in HPE only as a preposition, and it is rare even as a preposition in speakers who arrived prior to the late 1920s. Go, however, occurs frequently, and in three contexts: as a main verb, as a marker of imperatives, and as a preverbal modifier of extremely indeterminate meaning and wildly fluctuating distribution (some HPE speakers use it before every third or fourth verb; others don't use it at all). The nearest antecedent to a complementizer go derives from its imperative use. One can have paratactic strings of imperative structures, as in /59/:
159I go tek tu fala go hapai dis wan
go take two men go carry this one 'Take two men and take this away'
From their intonation contour, pauses, etc., these are clearly two independen t sentences, but production of such sequences in the more rapid tempo of HCE could conceivably serve as a source of true comple mentation. Such a result might be even more likely in the case of reported imperatives, such as /60/:
/ 60/ ai no tel yu palas, go join pentikosta
'I'm not telling you guys, "Join the Pentecostal Church" '
T
32 ROOTS OF LANGUAGE
This could, presumably, be reanalyzed as . . . telling you guys TO join . . .; at least with the benefit of the native English speaker's 20/20 hindsight.
Apart from these two constructions- imperative strings and
reported imperatives-there is nothing that looks remotely like a go· complementizer construction in HPE, and even these two are quite rare. There is thus no precedent far sentences such as the fallowing, which occur with considerable frequency in HCE:
/61/ dei wen go ap dea erli in da mawning go plaen
'They went up there early in the morning TO plant'
/62/ so ai go daun kiapu go push
'So I went down to Kiapu TO push (clear land with a bulldozer)'
/ 63/ ai gata go haia wan kapinta go fiks da fom
'I had TO hire a carpenter TO fix the form'
However, Jo often replaces go in environments which might appear at frrst giance to be identical:
/64/ aen dei figa, get sambadi fo push dem
'And they figured there'd be someone TO encourage them'
/65/ mo .beta a bin go hanalulu fa bai maiself
'It would have been better if I'd gone to Honolulu TO buy it
myself'
/66/ hau yu ekspek a gai fa mek pau hiz haus
'How do you expect a guy TO finish his house?'
In fact, the two sets of environments differ in an interesting way. The actions described in /61/-/63/ all actually occurred, while those de scribed in /64/-/66/ were all hypothetical: there wasn't anyone to encourage the basketball team referred to in /64/; the speaker of /65/ hadn't gone to Honolulu; and the hypothetical guy in /66/ couldn't complete his hypothetical house because the very real bank manager who was being addressed wouldn't issue a loan for that purpose. In
'
PIDGIN INTO CREOLE 33
other words, HCE marks grammatically the semantic distinction be tween sentential complements which refer to realized events and those which refer to unrealized events.
The distinction is blurred a little by some sentences which contain both Jo and go:
/67 / pip!no laik tek om fo go wok 'People don't want TO employ him'
/68/ rumach trabl, ae, fo go fiks om op
'It's a lot of trouble, you see, TO fix it up'
But again, these complements express hypothetical or even nonoccur ring events; thus, these examples confirm the claim that Jo only occurs with unrealized events, and does not affect the claim that go, ALONE, occurs only with realized events.
In this area, then, HCE has made two distinct innovations, one semantic, one syntactic. The syntactic innovation consisted of taking Jo and go, a preposition and an imperative marker, respectively, and using them to introduce embedded sentences, which were themselves an innovation. Even with the possible stimulus supplied by HPE sen tences such as /59/ and /60/, this represents a massive change. However, the semantic innovation- distinguishing realized from unrealized com plements-was completely without precedent in HPE, in English, or in any of the substrate languages. We should bear this in mind when we encounter widely separated creoles with identical distinctions in Chapter 2.4
The fifth and final example of HCE innovation which we will examine here is rather more complex than the previous examples, involving, as it does, the interaction of two rules: a rule of relativization and a rule of subject-copying. Each of these rules itself involves inno vation, but I shall say little about these since it is their interaction that shows most dramatically the working of creole creativity.
34 ROOTS OF LANGUAGE PIDGIN INTO CREOLE 35
Insertion of a pronoun between subject and predicate was noted above as a feature of Filipino HPE; this feature is discussed at length in Bickerton and Odo (1976:3.6.1). There is no dear evidence that it is used as anything but a marker of verbal (as distinct from adjectival, nominal, or locative) predicates by any but a small minority of very late (post-1926) arrivals. However, HCE speakers use the same feature for all full-NP subjects on first mention and for all full-NP contrastive subjects; it follows from this that all full-NP subjects ·of indefinite refer ence are thus marked (since indefinite reference marks first mention only, and the some guys who do X turn into the they or those guys who do Y). Thus, in HCE, sentences such as /69/ and /71/ are common, whereas /70/ and /72/ would be ungrammatical:
/69/ sam gaiz samtaimz dei kam 'Sometimes some guys come'
/70/ *sam gaiz samtaimz kam
/71/ jaepan gaiz dei no giv a haeng, do
'Guys from Japan don't give a hang, though'
/72/ *jaepan gaiz no giv a haeng, do
The function of pronoun-copying in HCE is dearly linked with that of the movement rules discussed above. All deal with constituents selected for special focus; movement rules move those constituents to the left, but subject NPs are already leftmost constituents and can thus only be "symbolically" moved by inserting something between them and the rest of the sentence.
Relative clauses,
among pre-1920
immigrants, are
rare, and
when they
do occur,
often they
do so
in forms
influenced by
the speaker's
native language,
cf. /14/
above. Among
HCE speakers,
relative clauses
are common.
However, they
differ from
English relative
clauses in
that they contain
no surface
marker of
relativization even
where English
demands one,
i.e.,
in sentences
where the
noun relativized
on is
sub ject
of the
clause, and
either subject
/73/ or
object /74/
of the
main sentence:
'
/73/ da gai gon lei da vainil fo mi bin kwot mi prais
'The guy WHO is going to lay the vinyl for me had quoted me a price'
174I yu si di ailan get koknat
'You see the island THAT has coconut palms on it?'
We will consider how such sentences may be generated in Chapter 2.
The interaction of those two rules comes about when full NPs of indefmite reference and other NPs which must be copied occur as head nouns of relative clauses and subjects of those clauses. In non relative sentences, such as /69/ or /71/, the copy either immediately follows the NP, as in /71/, or, if an adverb is present, as in /69/, immediately precedes the verb. In relative-clause sentences, however, the copy must follow the entire relative clause:
/75/ sam filipinoz wok ova hia dei wen kapl yiaz in ftlipin ailaenz 'Some Filipinos WHO worked over here went to the Philippines
for a couple of years'
/76/ *sam filipinoz dei wok ova hia wen kapl yiaz . . .
177I *sam ftlipinoz dei wok ova hia dei wen kapl yiaz . , .
/78/ *sam filipinoz wok ova hia wen kapl yiaz . , ,
179I sambadi goin ova dea dei gon hia nau
'Anybody WHO's going over there will hear it now'
/80/ *sambadi dei g'?in ova dea gon hia it nau
/81/ *sambadi dei goin ova dea dei gon hia it nau
/82/ *sambadi goin ova dea gon hia it nau
It cannot be claimed that in /75/ or /79/ the copy represents some "resumptive" device whose presence is due to the distance be tween subject and main verb; if this were the case, the subject of /73/, which is even further from its verb, would be similarly copied. More over, a "resumptive" argument does not explain why /77 / and /81/ are ungrammatical, and cannot account for the presence of copies in
/69/ and /71/.
36 ROOTS OF LANGUAGE
The real problem is explaining the different placement of the copy in, e.g., /71/ and /79/. We can see what is happening if we look at what is probably the underlying structure of /79/ (I shall defend the rule that rewrites NP as S, rather than N S, in the next chapter):
/83/ sr-----
PIDGIN INTO CREOLE 37
A-over-A principle, cannot have done so as a result of experience.
In the first place, no sentences involving both relativization and subject-copying are found in pre-1920 arrivals, and therefore the varying distribution of copies in relative and nonrelative sentences cannot have been acquired from HPE speakers. The differences from English are obvious: sentences like /7 5/ and /79/ would be ungramma tical even in those so-called "substandard" dialects of English which
NP
o.k.
s,
VP
Aux VP
V Adv
permit subject-copying and{or deletion of relative pronouns in
subject position. No substrate language combines similar modes of relativization and focusing; therefore, none of them could have pro vided relevant evidence. Moreover, in this case we have much clearer proof than before that the current of innovation ran from HCE back into HPE, rather than vice versa.
Among later immigrants, there was just one (arrival date 1930)
sambadi
V Adv
I 6
goin ova dea
gon
hia
nau
who attempted complex sentences such as /79/. Although he some times got them right, he would, with equal frequency, produce sen tences with two copies, as in /81/, or no copies, as in {82/:
/84/ awl diz bigshat pip!dei gat plenti mani dei no kea
If S1 constituted an independent sentence, then the rule of subject copying would place the appropriate pronoun immediately to the right of the NP marked with an asterisk to yield sambadi dei goin ova dea. However, when S1 is embedded in S0 , the higher-circled NP node
{85/
'All these big shots who have plenty of money don't care' sam kam autsaid kam mo was
'Some who come out (of jail) become worse'
must have the pronoun adjoined to it in order to yield /7 9{ , rather
than the ungrammatical /80{.
Chomsky (1964)
proposed a
universal principle
termed the
"A-over-A
principle," which
states that
if
a major
category, such
as NP, is
directly dominated
by the same
major category,
then any
rule that would
normally apply
to the
lower category
node could
apply only to
the higher
node. Although
the principle as
there formulated
has not
been widely
accepted (cf.
Ross 1967),
similar phenomena
have been observed
in a
number of
languages, and
something resembling
such a
principle must
still be
regarded as
a likely
formal universal.
Formal universals
must be
regarded part
of the
innate equipment
of the species,
and HCE
speakers, however
they may
have arrived
at the
These sentences are of course ungrammatical in HCE, and no locally born speaker would have produced them. But they are just the kind of vague approximations that are made by foreign-language learners when they try to apply a new and imperfectly-acquired rule. Indeed, HCE, once established, was just that-a new foreign language-and joined earlier versions of HPE as a part of the input to immigrant speakers who arrived in Hawaii after 1920.
We have now surveyed five quite distinct aspects of HCE gram mar and found in each of them dear innovations by the earliest HCE
38 ROOTS OF LA'llGUAGE
speakers; developments in the grammar which can have owed little or nothing to HPE, to English, or to any of the substrate languages involved. We may briefly review those developments by presenting a more formal summary in terms of the grammatical rules involved, showing first the HPE rules-if HPE can be said to have rules or a grammar of its own; Ithink that HPE would really have to have an analysis like that proposed by Silverstein (1972) for Chinook Jargon, in which the pidgin forms would be produced by extensions and modifications of the HPE speakers' original native languages-and then
the HCE rules for each of the £ve areas.
PIDGIN INTO CREOLE 39
/91/ NP -> j (da) l N
/ (wan) \
There would
be no
rule that
would determine
the circumstances
under which da,
wan,
or (/)
would be
generated. HCE,
on the
other hand, would
have the
following rule
{I will
ignore determiners
other than articles):
l
/92/
NP _,.
Art
N
/93/ Art _,. Definite
With regard
to ·basic
sentence-structure and
movement rules,
HPE would
have the
following
phrase-structure (PS)
rules:
l
/86/ S -+ NP V (NP) \
NP (NP) V
/94/
/95/
/96/
Nondefinite
Nonspecific Definite _,. da Nondefinite -+ wan Nonspecific -> (/)
V NP
HPE would have no movement rules. HCE, on the other hand, would have the following PS rules:
/87 / s _,. NP Aux VP
/88/ VP .... v (NP) (PP)
and in addition the following movement rules:
/89/ SD: NP VP
1 2 -+
SC: 2 1
/90/ SD: x v NP
1 2 3 _,.
SC: 3 1 2
For the
second area,
involving articles,
HPE, if
it had
any rule
at
all, would have something like /91/ : ·
'
For the third area, involving stei and other auxiliaries, it is not clear what rules, if any, HPE would have-possibly a rule such as /97/, which would also account for the fact that some auxiliaries, such as kaen, may function as main verbs, as in no kaen '(You) can't (do it)'/ 'It's impossible':
/97 / V _,. (VJ V
HCE, however, would have /87/, plus the following PS rules:
/98/ Aux ->- (Tense) (Modal) (Aspect)
/99/ Tense _,. Anterior
/100/ Modal -> • • • Irrealis . . .
/101/ Aspect _,. Nonpunctual
/102/ Anterior _,. bin
/103/ lrrealis -+ go
/104/ Nonpunctual -+ stei
40 ROOTS OF LANGUAGE
For the fourth area, involving fo, go, and sentential comple ments, HPE would have no rules. HCE would possibly have something like the following PS rule (but see Chapter 2 on the status of comple
mentizers in creoles generally ):
/1051 NP -+ (COMP) S
/106/ COMP _,. \ Realized l
/ Unrealized \
/107 / Realized -+ go
/1081 Unrealized ., fo
In addition, HCE would require something analogous to (but probably not identical with ) the English rule of equi-deletion.
Finally, for the nfth area, involving relativization, subject
copying, and their interaction , we might need a rule for Filipino speak ers which would modify /97I to something like /109/:
/109/ v
-+ \ ((Vi J) Vv \
Pred
(All but the later HCE-influenced HPE speakers realize the copy, if indeed for them it is a copy-it is more likely a marker of a particular predicate type-as an invariant i, i.e., in contradistinction to the HCE rule, subject features such as plural or fem inine are not copied onto it.) A few speakers might have, in addition, a rule for relativization that would simply replace NP by S. HCE speakers would have a well
established rule:
/110/ NP _,. S
In addition, they would have the following transformational rule:
\
PIDGIN INTO CREOLE 41
/111/ SD: NP VP
[;;: :r ]
1 2 ....
SC: 1 + pro 2
[;;:::r]
The A-0ver-A principle, or whatever general constraint governs the subject-copying rule in relativized sentences, would not need to be separately stated in the HCE grammar since it would presumably be a universal.
All that remains for us is to ask how these quite substantial innovations could have been produced. There would seem to be only two logically possible alternatives. They could have been produced by some kind of general problem-solving device such as might be applied in any field of human behavior where the required human institutions were lacking-much as survivors of a shipwreck or an atomic holocaust might reconstruct government, laws, and other social institutions. Or they might have been produced by the operation of innate faculties genetically programmed to provide at least the basis for an adequate human language.
If Hawaii
were the
only place where
people had
been. faced with
the problem
of reconstructing
human language,
it would
be impossible to
decide between
these alternatives.
However,
Hawaii is far
from unique.
There are
a number
of creole
langnages in
other. parts of
the globe,
but produced
under very similar
circumstances, several of
which have
been described
well enough
to make
compatison possible. It
is true
that in
these cases
we do
not have
the antecedent
pidgin for
compatative purposes,
5
but we
shall see
that there
are still some
oblique indications
of antecedent
structure. In.
any case,
it
is difficult
to see,
given the
rapidity with
which creoles
arose, how
those antecedent pidgins
could have
developed any
further than
Hawaii's
did.
42 ROOTS OF
LA\.TGUAGE
Now, of
the two
alternatives stated
above, each
would seem
to make different
predictions about
the general
nature of
creoles. If
some general
problem-solving device
were at
work, we
would not
expect that in
every different
circumstance it
would reach
the same
set of
conclusions. There
are any
number of
possible solutions
to the
struc tural and communicative
problems that
language poses,
as the
very diversity of
the world's
languages shows,
and we
would expect
;o
f'."d that, given
the differences
in geographical
region, culture,
contnbut:"g
languages, and
so on,
each group
faced with
the task
of reconstructrng
language would
arrive
at quite
different soltions.
Indeed: unles
I am
mistaken, orthodox
generativists,
even while
believing m
an innate
language faculty,
might predict
the same
result since
their thery
assigns to
that faculty
nothing more
than those
formal and
substantive universals
which are
reflected in
all languages.
Thus, they
could pre
dict no
more of
a creole
than that
it should
not violate
any universal
constraint.
However, if all creoles could be shown to exhibit an identity far beyond the scope of chance, this would constitute strong eidence that some genetic program common to all members of the species was decisively shaping the result.
\
Chapter 2
CREOLE
Although similarities among creoles have been known to exist at least since the pioneering work of Schuchardt and others in the latter half of the 19th century, it was not until the middle of the present century that articles by Taylor (1960, 1963, etc.), Thompson (1961), Whinnom (1956, 1965), and others began to spell out these similarities in any detail. Curiously, their pioneering efforts were not systematically developed; in general, creolists continued to describe individual creoles, or (much more rarely) groups of creoles with a common superstratum (e.g., Goodman 1964, Hancock 1970, Alleyne 1980), or else simply used already existing data in long-drawn,out and essentially fruitless debates on issues such as monogenesis versus poly genesis, or substrate versus superstrate influence (Bickerton [1976] provides a brief summary of these).
While the profession badly needs a volume that would systema tically compare all the well-known creoles, such a task lies beyond the scope of the present volume. Instead, I shall look at general creole patterns in the five areas covered in the last chapter, plus some other areas, to give a rough general picture which should enable us to deter mine how far they, and HCE, resemble one another; and I shall then
44 ROOTS OF LANGUAGE
explore in greater depth two areas-verb-phrase .complementation and the syntax and semantics of TMA systems-which have already been treated by various writers more extensively than other areas. We should then be in a position to answer the questions posed at the end of the
previous chapter. . .
Before embarking on this task, however, 1t is necessary to say
a few words about some of the peculiar problems it involves. One set of problems arises from the limitations of man existing escriptions of creoles. No creole language has yet been provided the kmd of com prehensive and detailed reference grarnma that is taken for granted in most areal fields. With too few exceptions, creole grammars tend to stop where the syntax gets interesting, e.g., "complex sentences" are often dismissed with a page or two of unanalyzed examples. For many creoles, only outline sketches are available. Morovr, some descriptions may be based on incorrect data or contam mcorrect analyses. As for tbe two creoles that l know best-Guyanese reole and Hawaiian Creole English-I must regretfully state that I fmd all previous descriptions deficient or misleading in a number f respects.
It might be argued here that it is premature to begm a:"Y general or theoretical work, especially one of a novel or controverSlal nature, until these lacunae have been filled and these errors amended. For instance, Corne (1977 :2) states: "Questions about the 'genesis' of t.he creole languages, their genetic relations with each other "':'d .w.1th their source language(s), the processes of creolisation (and p1dgm1:5a tion) cannot be approached seriously unless we know somethmg abou the object being talked about, and that we shall not know (in sufficient detail) until a lot more of the unglarnourous drudgery of careful descriptive work has been completed." This statement shows a profound misunderstanding of the ways in which cience is developed and knowledge increases. Empirical knowledge is no guarantee of certitude, and its absence no barrier to insight; I would oppose, to Corne, the following statement by Dingwall (1979:3): "Relying o.n logical argument alone, Leucippus was able to develop the atomic theory, while Aristotle, able to rely, on the results of numerous dis-
CREOLE 45
sections, failed to discover the correct function of the brain , imagining it to be the cooling system of the body."
The view that rheorists are mere grandstanding prima donnas, while the real work of the trade is done by the modest empirical plodder, is a widespread misconception in creole studies that merely underlines the immaturity of the field. In the real world, unglamorous drudges never artive at that moment of revelation which is always, like the rainbow, just beyond the next bend. For them, it's always "a little too early to judge"; the data are "not yet all in." They bequeath to their successors no more than mountains of fact, which may or may not contain the nuggets that would genuinely enrich us; more often, I suspect, the latter, since the facts one can gather about any language are infinite in number, and by no means all of equal value. What is needed is not dogged fact-gathering (with or without moral sermons) but the capacity to distinguish between the trivial and the nontrivial. The task of the theorist is to tell the field worker where to look and what to look for, and if the latter chooses to reject such aid, he has about as much brain as the man who throws away his metal detector and proceeds to dig by hand the three-acre field where he thinks treasure lies buried.
Another problem in creole studies is the question of how to interpret differences among creoles, where they genuinely exist. Are we to assume that any and every difference must be given equal weight? Such an assumption would be naive, as I shall try to show.
Creoles are
the nearest
thing one
can find
to ab
ovo creations
of language, but
they are
not and
cannot be
purely ah
ovo creations. At
the very
least, pidgins
provide some
input to them,
and this,
even if deficient,
even if
sometimes rejected,
as we
saw, is
still input.
Since pidgins show
clear substratum
differences, and
since the
composition of substrata
differs from
place to
place, that
input must
also be
a variable, which
must somehow
be factored
out if
we are
to determine the
extent to
which creoles
are genuinely
creative.
46 ROOTS OF LA't<GUAGE
But there is another variable in pidgins that may have more far-reaching consequences than differences in the pidgin substrata: that is, the extent of superstrate influence on the pidgin. This in turn will depend on ratios of superstrate to nonsuperstrate speakers; if the former are numerous, there will be more superstrate features avail able to the first creole generation. We have already noted the case of Reunion. But there are some areas in which population ratios during the pidginization stage are unknown; hence, even if we exclude known cases like Reunion, this variable cannot be entirely eliminated. More over, factors other than demographic may influence it. Population ratios in Hawaii differed little from those in the Caribbean, but the (relative) freedom of an indentured as opposed to a slave society must have had some effects on the quantity and quality of linguistic inter action, and may well explain why we find more English features in both HPE and HCE than we do in a creole like Sranan, or even in the basilectal varieties of Guyanese or Jamaican Creole.
Other problems arise from the operation of linguistic change processes, be those processes internal or contact produced.
Internal changes affect languages regardless of their ancestry, and one would imagine that creoles, by the very recency of their emergence from rudimentary pre-pidgins, would be more, rather than less, subject to such changes than more developed languages. The oldest creoles have a time depth approaching five hundred years, which is certainly adequate for a number of significant changes to have taken place; but in most cases the absence of written records from earlier periods, and the unreliability of such records where they do exist not necessarily the fault of the witnesses, since these were Europeans, and code-switching presumably existed in the 17th century as it does today-makes it difficult indeed to estimate the extent and nature of such changes. 1
However, in addition to internal change there is the contact stimulated type of change known as decreolization. This can affect any creole which has remained in contact with its superstrate, as most have. Decreolization is well docu!ll,ented fur some English creoles
CREOLE 47
(DeCamp 1971, Bickerton 1973a, 1975), but has been largely ignored in studies of other creoles. Valdman (1973) suggests that it is equally widespread among French varieties, and its presence in Cabo Verdiense and some other Portuguese creoles is quite apparent. The result of decreolization is to create a continuum of intermediate varieties be tween creole and superstrate. If this process is sufficiently long and intense, the continuum may be progressively eroded at its creole end. The result may be a synchronic state in which the most conservative variety recoverable is already considerably different from (and con siderably closer to the supersttate than) the original creole; this is obvious in some cases, e.g., Trinidad, but may be less so elsewhere.
Again, in some cases where truly conservative varieties are recoverable, researchers may have failed to unearth them (the obser vations of Bailey [1971] on the texts in Le Page and DeCamp [1960 ) are very relevant here). To compare a partially decreolized creole with a nondecreolized one can only produce an appearance of difference which might not have existed had it been possible to compare the two languages in their pristine condition. Yet, given present uncertainties as to which creoles have decreolized, and how much, this trap is one into which the most careful scholar might inadvertently fall.
A field so fraught with possible sources of error might seem to provide the comparativist with an inexhaustible source of alibis. Faced with any apparent difference, he could say: "Well, this must be due to one or another of these interfering factors, so let's just forget it!" Any such procedure would turn the inquiry into a farce, and yet, in light of the foregoing paragraphs, it would be equally irresponsible to take every difference at its face value and accord equal weight to each. lf, as indicated in Chapter 1, there is some unique, creative force at work in the formation of creoles, we must try to distinguish this from other forces that might interact with it and serve to mask it. But unless we can show precisely which factor is involved, why it should have taken
effect, and how
it
could have
worked to
provide the
observed results,
our efforts
will be
valueless.
48 ROOTS OF LANGUAGE
A final problem concerns the weighing of evidence and the criteria for making judgments. This is of particular importance when we come to deal with apparent cases of substratum influence.
Claims of substratum influence still persist strongly in creole studies and are made in such recen t works as Jansen, Koopman and Muysken (1978), Alleyne (1979, 1980), etc. However, substrato maniacs, if I may give them their convenient and traditional name, seem to be satisfied with selecting particular structures in one or more creole languages and showing that superficially similar structures can be found in one or more West African languages (at least one careful study, Huttar [197 5] , has shown that such structures are not always as similar as they might appear at first glance). This may be just as well; if they pursued their inquiries any further, they would find that not only would they have to confront some rather serious diffi culties, but that even if they overcame these, they would, perforce, wind up in a position which is only a step away from that which is proposed here.
Let us suppose that a very common structure in Caribbean creoles is also attested for Yoruba and perhaps one or two other rela tively minor languages (this case is not hypothetical; we shall meet with it in the very next section). To most substratomaniacs, the mere existence of such similarities constitutes self-evident proof of the connection. They seldom even consider the problem of transmission. How does a rule get from Yoruba into a creole?
Theoretically, there
are several
,possibilities. One
at least-some
kind of
monogenetic ancestor
which would
have taken
structure from
Yoruba and
other languages
and passed
it on
to a
wide range
of descen
dents-has
been proposed
many times,
but no
body of
evidence (save
for just
those creole
similarities it
purports to
explain!)
has ever
been presented
for such
a language,
and until
one is,
we can
safely ignore
it. Consequently, we
must assume
that our
rule, and
perhaps others,
passed from
Yoruba into
the antecedent
pidgin s
of a
number of
creoles, and thence
into those
creoles. For
this to
have happened,
a substantial
number of
Yoruba speakers
must ha.;'e
been present
during the
pidgin
CREOLE 49
phase in
each area,
or at
least no
later than
the earliest
phase of
creoli
zation. If
not, if
a substantial
number did
not arrive
in a
given area until
after the
creole had
been formed,
then previous
speakers would
hardly abandon
the rules they
themselves had arrived
at and
replace them with
new rules,
unless the
number of
Yoruba was
so great
as to co.nstitute
an absolute
majority-and that,
to the
best of
present knowl-
edge, was
never true
at any
time for
any Caribbean
territory.2
Now, while it would be difficult, if not impossible, to prove that there were no Yorubas in any given area at the time of creolization, there are a number of areas where their presence must have been heavily outweighed by members of other groups. If we take Sara maccan, for instance, generally regarded as the most African-like of creoles, we find very few lexical survivals even from the whole Kwa group (of which Yoruba is a member) but very many from Bantu lan guages, in particular Kikongo (Daeleman 1972). One would think that the frrst task in constructing any substratum theory would be to show that the necessary groups were in the necessary places at the necessary tirnes; But this has simply not been done.
There are linguistic as well as historical problems to be faced by any serious substratum theory. As things stand, we are asked to believe that different African languages contributed different rules and features to particular creoles. To accept that this is possible is to accept what Dillard(l 970), in a slightly different context, aptly termed the "Cafe teria Principle." Dillard was arguing against the once widespread belief
tat creoles were mixtures of rules and features from various regional dialectsof the British Isles. But if it is absurd to suppose that a creole could mix fragments of Irish, Wessex, Norfolk, and Yorkshire dialects itis at. least as absurd to suppose that a creole could mix fragments of
· Yoruba, Akan, Igbo, Mandinka, and Wolof-to mention some of the African languages which substratomaniacs most frequently invoke.
Let us suppose, however, that such miracles were possible, and that Yoruba speakers were indeed distributed in such a way that the
50 ROOTS OF LA".l\IGUAGE
requisite input could be provided. Nobody can deny that, in every case, there were many other African languages involved in each area, and nobody who knows anything about African languages can deny that, even within the Kwa group-and a fortiori outside it-there are wide differences in rules and rule systems. What could be so special about a particular Yoruba rule (such as the one for verb-focusing which we will shortly discuss) that would cause it to be accepted over all compe titors in a number of different and quite ·separate groups?
This 1uestion has been raised with respect to one feature which is by no means limited to Yoruba: verb-serialization. In their analysis of this phenomenon, Jansen, Koopman and Muysken (1978), while accepting the standard substratum explanation, wonder why it is that creoles, with their dear preference for features that are unmarked in the Jakobsonian sense, should have selected one which is quite rare among the world's languages, and highly unstable (subject to rapid change) even in those that have it. They are unable to provide an answer, although I shall suggest one in the latter part of this chapter.
In a general sense, we can claim that the only possible factor that could lead a group to accept a particular rule out of a set of alternatives must have to do with the emerging system of the language which that group is engaged in developing. It could only be that , at any given stage in that development, the language could only incorpor ate rules of a certain type, and would have to reject others. Although we still know far too little about dynamic processes in language to be able to say what such constraints on development might be like, we can be reasonably certain that they exist. Languages, even creoles, are systems, systems have structure, and things incompatible with that structure cannot be borrowed; SVO languages cannot borrow a set of post positions, to take an extreme and obvious case. If a marked struc ture is incorporated (and if verb-serialization is highly marked, then verb-focusing is super-highly marked) , it can only be because the language, at that particular stage of its development , has to have some
such rule.
That a creole language has to have certain types of rules is
'
CREOLE 51
exactly what
the present
study is
designed to
prove. If
such rules happen
to be
present in
the input
in certain
cases, that is
in no
way counter to
the theory
expressed here;
the creole
will acquire
such rules,
not because
they are
in the
input, for
many conflicting
rules must
be there
also, but
because such
a rule
is required
by the
struc ture of
the emerging
language. Indeed,
presence in
the input
may not even
be a
necessary, let
alone a
sufficient, condition
since the
first creole generation
could well
have devised
such a
rule for
itself; we
saw in the
first chapter
that that
generation can
and does
invent rules
without benefit
of experience.
But even
if we
accept the
entire sub
stratum case,
the situation
is not
substantively changed;
the first
creole generation has
merely acquired
the kind
of rule
that it
was programmed
to acquire,
and saved
itself the
trouble, so
to speak,
of having
to invent
something equivalent.
Thus, when
taken to
their logical
conclusions, substratum
arguments only
bring us
back to
the question
this book
will
try to
solve: why
do creole
speakers acquire
some types
of rule,
but not others?
With these
points clarified,
we can
now survey
some key
areas of grammar
and see
something of
the range
and extent
of the
similarities which any
creole theory
must somehow
account for.
Movement Rules
HCE, as we have seen, moved focused constituents to sentence initial position. The same procedure, with some modifications which I shall discuss in a moment, is followed by all other creoles.
It is sometimes suggested that there is nothing very remarkable about this fact, since many languages have similar processes. But it is also true that many languages have also, or instead, other methods of marking focus, such as changes in stress or tone patterns, or the use of focusing particles. The fact that creoles have adopted none of these
alternative strategies
cannot be
without significance.
52 ROOTS
OF
LANGUAGE
However, there are certain differences between HCE and the Caribbean creoles in the ways in which this general strategy is imple mented. I shall illustrate the Caribbean strategy from Guyanese Creole (GC), since this language seems to be typical in all respects.
Let us start with a simple declarative sentence such as /1/:
/1/ Jan bin sii wan uman 'John had seen a woman'
The subject can be focused by adjoining the equative copula a to the first NP:
/2/ a Jan bin sii wan uman
'It was John who had seen a woman'
The object can be focused by moving the NP to sentence-initial position and again adjoining a:
/ 3/ a wan uman Jan bin sii
'It was a woman that John had seen'
Other VP constituents such as oblique-case NPs and adverbials can be focused in an identical manner. However, the verb can also be focused by a rather different procedure; it is again preposed and a is adjoined to it, but a copy is obligatorily left at the extraction site:
/4/ a sii Jan bin sii wan uman
There is no exact equivalent to /4/ in English; it is roughly equivalent to 'John had seen a woman' or 'John had really seen a woman' or 'Seen a woman, that's what John had done'. In English , it is impossible to apply a movement rule to V alone; English movement rules apply to major categories, and major categories in English are NP and VP.
This fact must immediately raise doubts about the status of
'
CREOLE 53
VP in GC, for while NP and V can be moved freely, VP cannot:
/5/ *a sii wan uman Jan bin
/6/ *a bin sii wan uman Jan
/7I *a sii wan uman Jan bin sii
/8/ *a bin sii wan uman Jan bin sii
Note that /6/ without a and with appropriate lexical and phonological changes would be grammatical in HCE:
19/ (i) bin si wan wahini, Jan.
One difference between GC and HCE could then be due to the fact that the latter has the category VP while the former does not. VP has always been a problem for generative grammar; many scholars
have been unwilling to accept it as a universal category since (among
other things) it is hard to posit for VSO languages where it would be a discontinuous constituent in deep structure. I know of no rule in GC for which VP has to be specified in the structural description (GC does not have the equivalent of English VP deletion, for example).
However, this seems like a pretty massive difference to begin our list of similarities with. If creoles are constrained by a genetic program, how could things like this possibly come about?
If, as will be claimed in Chapter 4, the original building blocks of language are just NPs and Vs, then VP is not a primitive constituent, but V is; thus, in the earliest stages of a creole, I would predict that V, but not VP, would be a category. However, either as a result of de creolization, involving contact with a language which already has VP as a category, or of internal change, a creole can develop VP.
Previously, we established that superstrate influence was one of the factors which would disrupt natural creole development, whether that influence came during pidginization or, much later, through
54 ROOTS
OF LAA
GUAGE
decreolization. That
the results
of influence
at these
two points
can be virt
ually identical
and impossible
to disentangle
is testified
by the
elo quent bafflement
of Corne's
comments on
the status
of Reunion
Creole (Corne
1977
:223-24).3
For
instance, as
mesolectal varieties
of GC
come under
English influence,
they develop
VP. Now,
it seems plausible
to suppose
that HCE,
which, as
we have
seen, was
influenced by English
more strongly
than most
other English
creoles, acquired
VP at
birth, rather
than two
or three
hundred years
later (though
I would agMe
that for
the moment
there is
no obvious
way to
prove this). If
this is
so, then
HCE would
not be
typical of
the most
natural creole
development; but
the overall
theory would
be unaffected,
since Washabaugh's
( 1979)
claim that
any
genetically-programmed
feature should appear
universally in
creoles, irrespective
of other
conflicting factors, is
a blatant
straw man.
However, we
still have
to show
why GC
copies the
verb. Here, the
hypothetical case
of the
Yoruba rule
discussed in
the preceding
section becomes
real, for
Yoruba does
indeed have
a rule
that yields
sentences very
similar to,
although not
identical
with /4/.
At first
sight this
rule looks
so weird
that one
thinks (I
myself thought
for several years)
that direct
borrowing must
be the
only possible
source. However,
consider for
a moment
what would
happen if
GC had
a rule
which said, "Move
all major
categories"
(probably
true of
any human lan
guage), plus
a condition
which specified
that major
categories were NP
and V
(which is
highly probable
based on
the evidence),
but this movement
did
NOT leave
a copy
of V
at the
extraction site.
Such a rule would separate verbs from their auxiliaries, and this would immediately cause severe processing problems for speakers of creoles. It is a condition on transformations generally that meaning be recoverable, but since a number of auxiliaries (e.g., GC go ) are hornoph onous with full verbs or can modify zero copulas, and since many full verbs are homophonous with the nouns derived from them, sentences in which only V is fronted could wind up with meanings completely different from those they originally had. Take the following examples:
'
CREOLE 55
/10/ Jan
bin go
wok a
haspital
'John would have worked at the hospital'
/11/ *a wok Jan bingo a haspital
The italicized main clause in /11/ constitutes a complete sentence with the meaning 'John had gone to the hospital'. Since wok can be noun or verb, and since nouns are fronted without copying, as in /2/ and
/3/, /11{could be, and almost certainly would be, interpreted as 'It was work that John had gone to the hospital for'. Again, if V-fronting minus copying were applied to / 1/ above, it would yield:
/12/ *a sii Jan bin wan uman
This couldonly be interpreted as a (slightly ungrammatical) version of 'He (or I) saw that John was a woman!' Thus, if a copy is not left, meaning is irrecoverable. It would seem, therefore, that any language with movement rules that involve V only, rather than VP, MUST de velop a copying rule (or if, as has often been suggested in the literature, movement rules normally consist of two parts, one which Chomsky adjoins a copy of the constituent to S and one which deletes the original. constituent, it must then merely suppress the second half of the process). No borrowing from any other language would be required. Moreover, a claim that GC borrowed the tule from Yoruba setS" up an infinite regress: where did Yoruba borrow it from? It is much more ·.plausible to suppose that languages independently invent rules when these are demanded by the structure of the language plus func tional requirements.
The other difference between GC and HCE rules involves the use of an equative copula. HCE could not use such a copula because it never developed one. Absence of an equative copula seems to be
characteristic of those languages (e.g., HCE, Crioulo, the Indian Ocean creoles[IOC] ) which show heavier superstrate influence, but as there is no plausible mechanism here to show WHY that influence should have this effect (positive influence is one thing, negative influence quite
56 ROOTS OF L&"IGUAGE
another), we
must note
this as
a potentially
significant difference.
In the
absence of
such a
focus-marking device,
some other
morpheme must be
recruited, and
creoles seem
to have
no specific
program for
either source
or position:
Crioulo ki
is
drawn from
a
superstrate rela
tivizer (Pg.
que)
and
postposed to
the extracted
constituent; Seychelles
Creoles sa
is
drawn from
its
own definite
article, in
turn derived
from Fr. fa,
and optionally
preposed; while
HCE uses (for
subject NP)
the quasi-obligatory
verb-predicate marker
fortuitously present
in Filipino
versions o•
HPE, post
posing it
and adding
number and
gender. This
diversity is
in sharp
contrast to
the generality
of left
movement, and
suggests (we
will later
provide abundant
evidence, not
just from
creoles but from
child language
acquisition) that
the genetic
program which
prod uces
language in
the species
highly specifies
some areas
of language and
leaves others
undetermined; this is
only to
be expected,
as a
genetic blueprint which
leaves no
room for
variation and
development would
freeze a
species at
a
single
developmental level.
Articles
There seems,
in contrast,
to be
hardly any
variation at
all in
the way that
creoles handle
articles. Virtually
all
creoles
have a
system iden
tical to
that of
HCE: a
definite article
for presupposed-specific
NP; an indefinite
article for
asserted-specific NP;
and zero
for nonspecific
NP.
GC provides
the following
examples:
{13/ Jan bai di buk
'John bought the book (that you already know about)'
/14/ Jan bai wan buk
'John bought a (particular) book'
115/ Jan bai buk
'John bought a book or books'
/16/ buk dia ft tru
'Books are really expensive!'
'
CREOLE 57
Papiamentu (PP)
provides the
following examples:
1171 mi tin e buki
'Ihave the book'
/18/ mi tin e bukinan 'I have the books'
/19/ mi tin un buki
'!have a book'
/20/ mi tin buki
'l have books'
/21/ buki ta caru
'Books are expensive'
Seychelles Creole (SC) provides the following examples:
/22/ mO pe aste Sa banan
'I am buying the banana'
/23/ mi'.\ pe aste ban banan
'I am buying the bananas'
/24/ mei pe aste banan
'Iam buying a banana'
Corne (1977:13) follows the same Anglocentric route as Perlman (1973) did for HCE when dealing with nonspecifics; he cites the follow ing two examples, /25/ and /26/, as "zero form . • . in NP of the VP" and "Ind + plural," respectively:
/25/ fakter i n amen let isi?
postman PM COMP bring letter here 'Did the postman bring a letter (here)?'4
/26/ nu pu al pret zuti
we IRR go borrow tool
'We shall go and borrow some tools'
58 ROOTS OF LANGUAGE
Corne does not mention subject generics, but we can assume that these too are treated as nonspecifics.
Similar illustrations
could be
produced for
almost any
creole. This area
of grammar
seems to
be highly
specified in
creoles; the
dis tinction between
specific and
nonspecific is
particularly clear
and consistent, and
when we
look at
language acquisition
in Chapter
3, we will
find confirmatory
evidence that
it is
probably innate.
Tense-Modality-Aspect (TMA) Systems
A majority
of creoles,
like HCE,
express tense,
modality, and
aspect by
means of
three preverbal
free morphemes,
placed (if
they co-occur) in
that order. I
have already
discussed the
typical creole
system elsewhere
(Bickerton 1974;
197
5:Chapter 2),
so here
I shall
give only a
brief outline, returning
later in
the chapter
to go much
more deeply into
some apparent
counterexamples which
have been
men tioned in
the literature.
In the
typical system-which
HCE
shares with
GC, Sranan
(SR), Saramaccan (SA),
Haitian Creole
(HC), and
a number
of other
creoles ranges of
meaning
of the
particles are
identical: the
tense particle
ex presses
[+Anterior] (very
roughly, past-before-past
for
action verbs
and past for
. stative
verbs) ;s
the modality
particle expresses
[+Irrealis]
(which includes
futures
and conditionals);
while
the aspect
particle expresses
[+Nonpunctual]
(progressive-durative
plus habitual-iterative).
The stem
form in
isolation expresses
the unmarked
term in
these three
oppositions, i.e.,
present statives
and
past nonstatives.
In
addition, there exist
combined
forms, some
of which
in some
languages have
been eroded
(in GC
by phonological
rules, in
HCE by
decreolization) ,
but of
which the
full set
is attested
for HC
(Hall 1953)
and SR
(Voor hoeve
1957).
Again, wherever
combined
forms are
present, their
meaning is
the same:
anterior plus
irrealis, counterfactual
conditions; anterior
plus nonpunctual,
past-before-past
durative or
habitual actions;
irrealis plus
nonpunctual, habitual
or
durative unrealized
actions; anterior
plus irrealis
plus nonpuncti,:al,
counterfactuals
which express
duration or
habituality.
CREOLE 59
Surface forms, of course, take a number of different shapes: anterior, GC bin, SA bi, SR hen, HC and Lesser Antillean Creole (LAC) te; irrealis, GC sa/go, SA o, SR sa, HC ava, LAC ke ; nonpunc tual, GC a, SA ta, SR e, HC ape, LAC k a.
HCE, with bin, go, and stei, shares even two of the GC surface forms, although the two languages are several thousand miles apart and their speakers have never been in contact. Combined forms have almost disappeared through decreolization, but are retained by a few speakers (Bickerton 1974), and/or are attested for earlier periods (Reinecke 1969, Tsuzaki 1971), although nowadays those who remember them are so unsure of what they once meant that one investigator (Perlman 1973) accused his consultants of making them up! (See discussion in Bickerton 1977:183ff.) Thus, we can again claim a highly programmed area, and many details of the ways in which children acquire quite different kinds of TMA systems (see Chapter 3, below) will serve to confirm this claim.
Realized and Unrealized Complements
What work has so far been done on creole complementation has focused largely on verb serialization, so data on this topic are extremely scarce. However, all the languages for which I have been able to find good data attest an identical structure to that of HCE, i.e., complementizers which are selected by the semantics of the em bedded S.
Roberts (197 5) reports the following contrast from Jamaican Creole (JC):
/27 I im gaan fi bied, bot im duon bied
'He went to wash, but he didn't wash'
/28/ *irn gaan go bied, bot irn duon bied
Here, go as complementizer cannot co-occur with a negative conjunct because its meaning expresses a realized action. However, fi is fully
60 ROOTS OF LAi"'<GUAGE
compatible with negative conjuncts since the actions it introduces are not (or, perhaps, are not necessarily) realized.
Jansen, Koopman
and Muysken
(1978) report
an identical
con trast
in Branan:
/29/ a teki a nefi foe koti a brede, ma no koti en
'He took the knife to cut the bread, but did not cut it'
/30/ *a teki a nefi koti a brede, ma no koti en
Here, the contrast is between foe and (/) as complementizers, but the
semantic distinction is identical.6
The examples so far have all been from English creoles although it is obvious that the distinction cannot have been derived from a lan guage which does not make it:
/31/ I managed to stop (entails "I stopped").
/32/ Ifailed to stop (entails "I did not stop").
/ 331 I went to see Mary and we talk ed about old times.
I34/ I went to see Mary but she wasn't home.
Fortunately for those who might still hypothesize some occult English influence, the same contrast is found in Mauritian Creole (MC). In one of the texts in Baker (1972), we find /35/:
/35/ Iidesid al met posoh ladah she decide go put fish in-it
'She decided to put a fish in (the pool)' A line or so later, /36/ follows:
/36/ Iidon posoh-la en ti noh-gate
she give fish-the one small nickname 'She gave the fish a little nickname'
\
CREOLE 61
In
other
words, she
had indeed
done what
she decided
to do,
i.e., put a
fish in
the pool.
The al-complement,
therefore, indicates
a realized action.
However, in
another text
we find
/37/ :
/37 I Iiti pe ale aswar pu al hril lakaz sa garsoh-la
he TNS MOD go evening for go burn house that boy-the me lor sime ban dayin fin atake Ii
but on path PL witch COMP attack him
'He would have gone that evening to burn the hoy's house, but on the way he was attacked by witches'
Here, the subject of the sentence was prevented from carrying out his intention by the witches; accordingly, the complement is marked with pu al Since Baker does not discuss this construction, we have no way of knowing if, as I suspect, /38/ would be ungrammatical in that particular context:
/38/ Iiti pe ale aswar al bril lakaz . . .
However, all
realized complements
in Baker's
texts are
marked with
al
or (/) , and all unrealized complements are marked with pu or pu al.
These similarities, not previously pointed out in any published work, are particularly striking in that the structure looks like a highly marked one, being attested in few if any noncreole languages; and yet the identity is not merely semantic and syntactic; it extends even to the choice of lexical items-for pu derives from Fr. pour 'for', and Eng. for
is the source for HCE fo, JC fi, SR foe,1 while MC al 'go' and MC (/)
parallel HCE
go,
JC go,
and SR
(/J
.
While
it is
conceivable that
JC and SR
might have
some kind
of genetic
connection (although
no historical or
systematic linguistic
evidence has
been advanced),
there is
no possi
bility that
either could
have any
connection with
HCE, and
it is,
if that is
possible, even
less likely
that there
was ever
any connection
between these
three and
MC, which
has a
different superstrate
and
different
substratum language.
It
is impossible
to imagine
any other
62 ROOTS OF LANGUAGE
explanation than one based on the possession, by speakers in all four areas, of some quite specific program for language-building.
Relativization and Subject-Copying
In these
areas there
exist certain
differences. Most
creoles have
relative pronouns, at
least when
the head-noun is
also subject
of the relative
clause, but
HCE does
not. However,
the time
that most
creoles have had
to gain
relative pronouns
is
little less
than the
time it
took English to
gain them
in this
position (Bever
and Langendoen
1971).
If creoles
were indeed
born without
surface relativizers,
then the
same processing problems
that Bever
and Langendoen
discuss would
have applied
to them,
and there
would have
been a
similar pressure
to borrow
or adapt
some feature
that would
serve to
avoid such
problems.
However, any such speculation would be pure conjecture, if it were· not for the fact that in a number of creoles there still exist con servative dialects or restricted sentence types in which relative pronouns are deletable in subject position-or rather, more probably, were never inserted. In GC, for instance, this can happen when the head-noun of the relative clause is the object of the higher sentence and when the main verb of that sentence is an equivalent of have or be (the regular GC relative pronoun is we):
/39/ wan a dem a di man bin get di ham
'One of them was the man who had the bomb'
/40/ shi get wan grandaata bina main
'She had a grand-daughter who was being looked after (by her)'
Corne (1977:38)
gives some
examples of
relative clauses
in SC
where, also,
the head-noun
is object
of the
main clause,
and where
no rela
tivizer is
present on
the surface:
/41/ iana Born Lulu i d!lse deor
PM there-is good-guy wolf P dance outside 'There is Old Wolf who is dancing outside'
CREOLE 63
/42/ zot
truv sa
pov drayver
iakor
pe ata
mem
they see the poor driver PM still ASP wait same 'They see the poor driver who is still waiting'
Again, although in general the Portuguese creoles of the Bight of Benin have relative pronouns, Valkoff (1966:97) reports a conserva tive dialect of Annobones which lacks them:
/43/ me mu gogo na-mina sa gavi mother my like PL-child be good
'My mother likes the children who are good'
Thus, although there is no proof that creoles started without relative pronouns, the possibility cannot be ruled our. Moreover, as we shall see later, a rather indirect argument based on grammatical sim plicity points in the same direction.
From what
we have
already seen
of movement
rules, we
would not expect
to find
much similarity
in the
area of
subject-copying. This,
at least initially;
is some
kind of
focusing
device, and
we saw
that other
creoles have
means for
focusing which
employ other
features. However,
there are
at least
two creoles,
Crioulo (CR)
and SC,
which have
a form
i
that
characteristically occurs
between subject
and predicate,
but is
also the third
person singular
subject pronoun
in both
cases. Clearly,
what ever
function this
form may
originally have
had, it has
now become
obligatory in
certain contexts;
for instance,
it serves
to mark
present tense nonverbal
predicates, i.e.,
it functions
as a
kind of
copula:
/44/ CR: elis iamiigu
they PM friend 'They are friends'
/45/ CR: iamiigu
he friend
'He is a friend'
64 ROOTS
OF
LA.".iGUAGE
/46/ SC: lerua ibet
king PM stupid 'The king is stupid'
/47/ SC: i
bet
he stupid
'He is stupid'
Ishall
not explore
the meanings
and functions
of this
particle since
Wilson (1962),
practically the
only source
for CR,
does not
provide adequate
data, while
at the
other extreme,
Corne (1974-75)
and (1977)
presents masses
of data
on the
SC form
and shows
that its
complexities will
not yield
easily to
analysis. In
any case,
the principal
point that was
made with regard
to HCE
was not
specifically to
do with
either relativization or
subject-copying.
We saw
in Chapter
1 that
when the
subject of
the higher
clause is also
subject of
the relative
clause, the
subject-copy pronoun
follows the relative
clause
rather than
the subject noun,
although elsewhere
it directly
follows the
subject noun-as
i
does in
/46/,
for example,
Now, in
both CR
and SC,
in other
words in
the only
two creoles
in which we
could look
for an
analogue of
the HCE
structure (since
they are the
only ones
with anything
like a
subject copy),
we fmd
that in
subject-subject
relative-clause
sentences, ifollows
the
relative clause
and not
the noun
subject, i.e.,
it also
obeys the
A-over-A principle
orits equivalent
(examples from
Wilson 1962:30;
Corne 1977
:53):
/48/ CR: 3mi k bay awnti iriba
man who
go yesterday
PM return
'The man who went yesterday has returned'
/49/ SC: sel abitii ki mo kapab al trap Ii i zis sa vie toto
only farmer that I can go fool him PM just that old man 'The only farmer that I can go and fool is just that old man'
Moreover, these are not the only cases where the A-over-A principle applies to creoles: the placement of HC articles in relative
'
CREOLE 65
clause sentences is also affected. Normally, the HC definite article la immediately follows the noun: chwal-la 'the horse', k apten-na 'the captain'. However, if the noun is head-noun of a relative clause, the definite article follows that clause, i.e., it is adjoined to the higher rather than the lower NP:
/50/ kapt<!n ki re-arete-1-la t-ap-m<lte-l nii-betiz
captain who TNS-arrest-him-the TNS-ASP-put-him in-ridicule 'The captain who had arrested him was making fun of him'
/51/ livoye chwal yo pou-riiplase sila ki mouri-a
he send horse PL for-replace that which die-the
'He was sending the horses to replace the one which had died'
We have now surveyed the five areas which were discussed in Chapter 1 and found that in three of them (articles, TMA markers, and realized /unrealized complements) the "innovations" made by the original speakers of HCE were identical with the equivalent forms and meanings in all or most creoles, while in the remaining two there were broad, general similarities along with some differences in detail. It is worth noting that the similarities are most striking where a combi nation of semantic and syntactic factors interact; where purely syn tactic rules are involved, as with movement rules and relativization, there is a lesser degree of identity. Why this should be so will be ex
plained in Chapter 4, fn. 15.
I shall now, much more briefly, indicate some other areas in which strong creole resemblances can be found, before proceeding to a more thorough analysis of TMA systems and VP complemen tation.
Negation
In creoles generally, nondefmite subjects as well as nondefinite VP constituents must be negated, as well as the verb, in negative sen tences. Examples are from GC and Papia Kristang (PK):
66 ROOTS
OF LAt'IGUAGE
/52/ non dag na bait non kyat 'No dog bit any cat'
/53/ ngka ng'koza nte mersimentu not no-thing not-have value 'Nothing has any value'
Sentences of this kind do occur occasionally in HCE, e.g.:
/54/ nowan no kaen bit diz gaiz 'No one can beat these guys'
However, while negated VP constituents are common, negated subjects with negative verb are rare, perhaps because of persecution in the schools.
Existential and Possessive
Over a
wide range
of creoles,
the same
lexical
item is
used to
express existentials
("there is")
and possessives
("have"),
even though
this is
not true
of any
of the
superstrates (it
may be
true of
some substandard
Portuguese dialects
of Brazil,
but these
may well
be de
creolized remains
of an
earlier
creole). Examples
are from
GC, HC,
PP, and
Sao Tomense
(ST), respectively:
/55/ dem get wan uman we get gyal-pikni 'There is a woman who has a daughter'
/561 gf you film kig€ you pitir-fi
have one woman who have one child-daughter 'There is a woman who has a daughter'
/57 / tin un muhe cu tin un yiu-muhe
have a woman who have a child-woman 'There is a woman who has a daughter'
/58/ te ua mwala ku te ua mina-mosa have a woman who have a childiiirl
'There is a woman who has a daughter'
CREOLE 67
HCE follows an identical pattern:
/59/ get wan wahini shi get wan data
'There is
a woman
who has
a
daughter' We will
refer to
this area
again in
Chapter 4.
Copula
Practically all creoles show some similarities in this area. Adjec tives are surface verbs in creoles (see next section) and therefore require no copula. Locatives are introduced by verbs which normally are limited to that role, i.e., do not extend to existential or prenominal environments. A split occurs over treatment of nominal complements: the more heavily superstrate-influenced creoles (HCE, the Indian Ocean creoles, some Asian Portuguese creoles) tend to have zero copulas here also, although in some (SC, CR) the i form appears here as a predicate marker; the less heavily superstrate-influenced creoles of the Caribbean generally have a distinct verb in these envitonments.
There are minor exceptions to these generalizations. GC locative
de can express existentials, which HCE stei, for example, cannot:
/60/ wok na de
'There isn't any work'
/61/ *wok no stei
/62/ nomo wok
'There isn 't any work'
HCE and
SC have
negative
existentials-nomo and
napa-a
feature
found in
few if
any other
creoles which,
in the
HCE case
at least,
represents an
inheritance from
the antecedent
pidgin. The
locative ye
in HC
appears only
sentence-finally, Le.,
where it
is
stressed,
which,
together with
its phonetic
shape, suggests
that it
disappeared from
medial position
through phonological
reduction
processes.
68 ROOTS OF LANGUAGE
Although some of
these differences
may arise
from pidgin
retentions or
post-creolization
changes, it
would seem
that the
copula area is
only moderately
specified. There
is a
general tendency
toward semantic
transparency, i.e.,
having separate
forms for
each semantically
distinct copula
function (attribution,
with adjectives;
equation or
class membership, with
predicate nominals;
locative, with
adverbials of
place). However,
since these
semantic distinctions
are unambiguously
marked by
predicate type,
to mark
them a
second time
with distinc
tive copulas
may seem
redundant, and
perhaps this
accounts for
copula variability within
individual
creoles as
well as
across the
class.
Adjectives as Verbs
In a number of creoles (e.g., JC, Bailey 1966; GC, Bickerton 197 3) the adjective has been analyzed as forming a subcategory of stative verbs. Evidence from GC is the identical behavior of verbs and adjectives under a number of rules:
/63/ i wok
'He worked'
/64/ iwiiri
'He is tired'
/65/ i a wok
'He is working'
/66/ ia wiiri
'He is getting tired'
/67/ au i wok!
'How he works!'
/68/ au iwiiri!
'How tired he is!'
/69/ a wok i wok
'Work, that's what he did'
/70/ a wiiri iwiiri
'Tired, that's
what he
is'
\
CREOLE 69
Note that though syntactic rules apply identically, semantic interpre tation is often different in the two cases.8
Originally, all writers on the Indian Ocean creoles who dealt with this area (Baker 1972; Corne 1973, 1977; Papen 1975, 1978; Bollee 1977; etc.) treated verbs and adjectives as distinct classes and posited an underlying copula before predicate adjectives, which was subsequently deleted. However, in an insightful article, Corne (1981) renounces his former analysis and sets up a class of "Verbals," which would contain predicate adjectives as well as verbs and which would not require a copula in underlying structure; these "verbals" would then undergo at least some (Corne seems hesitant to push his argument too hard) of the processes which verbs undergo. It is worth noting that some of the evidence Corne surveys bears a striking resemblance to that found in GC, in particular the "inchoative" meaning of the nonpunctual marker pe when applied to adjectives, as compared to the meaning of the GC nonpunctual marker a when similarly acquired; compare the following with /66/ :
/71/ Iipe malad
he ASP sick
'He is getting sick'
/72/ Iipe a-koler
'He is getting angry'
173/
m6
pe lafe
'I am getting hungry'
This resemblance
between creoles
so widely
separated in
location and
origin is
quite striking.
Moreover, I
know of
no creole
where an
alterna tive
analysis of
adjectives would
be required.
HCE, not
surprisingly, has
a similar
"inchoative"
sense when
nonpunctual and
adjective are
conjoined:
/74/ ho, ai stei wail wid da meksikan gai
'Wow, I was getting mad at the Mexican guy'
70 ROOTS OF LANGUAGE
Questions
No creole shows any difference in syntactic structure between questions and statements. Question-particles, where they occur, are sentence-final and optional:
/7 5/ GC: i bai di eg-dem
'He bought the eggs'
/76/ GC: i bai di eg-dem?
'Did he buy the eggs?'
/77 / HC: yo pa-t-a-vle mene-m lakay-li
they not-TNS-MOD-want take-me house-his
'They wouldn't have wanted to take me to his house'
/78/ HC: yo pa-t-a-vle mene-m lakay-li?
'Wouldn't they have wanted to take me to his house?'
Question Words
In WH-questions, the question-word is directly preposed to the declarative form of the sentence. The question-words themselves, if not clearly adapted from their superstrate equivalents, are always composed in the following manner: they are birnorphemic; the first morpheme is derived from a superstrate question-word- English creole we, wi, or wa from Eng. which or what, French creole ki from Fr. qui 'who' or que 'what', Portuguese creole ke from Pg. que 'what':
/79/ GC: wisaid yu bin de?
which side you TNS be-LOC 'Where have you been?'
/80/ HC: ki kote OU we pwasCi-a?
what side you see fish-the 'Where did you see the fish?'
/81/ ST: ke situ e pe mi n-e-e?
what place he put maize in-it-QP 'Where did he put the me?'
CREOLE 71
Other forms
in English
creoles include
Cameroons Creole
wetin,
lit., 'what
thing', 'what';
GC wa
mek
,
lit., 'what
makes', 'why'.
Very often a creole has doublets, a superstrate adaptation and a bimorphemic creole form. Papen (1978:509) gives the following sets for SC and RC:
/82/ where = (i) (a)kot(e) (Fr. a cote de 'at')
(ii) ki lad rua (Fr. *qui l'endroit), 'Which place?'
ki bor (Fr. *qui bard), 'Which edge?'
|
/83/ |
how |
= |
koma (Fr. comment 'how') ki maner (Fr. *qui maniere ), 'What way?' |
|
/84/ |
why |
= |
(i) ( l)akoz ki (Fr. la cause que 'the reason that') |
|
/85/ |
when |
= |
(ii) ki fer (Fr. *quifaire ), 'What makes?' (i) ka (Fr. quand 'when') |
|
|
|
|
(ii) ki ler (Fr. *qui l'heure), 'What hour?' |
Papen does not state whether, in his estimation, one set is older or more creole than the other (failure to make any serious attempt to sort variants is a grave weakness in the otherwise thorough work done recently on Indian Ocean creoles), but we can be reasonably certain that the periphrastic forms represent the original creole; if the quasi French forms existed already, why should others have been invented?
Since HPE speakers acquired the full set of English question words except for why (HPE wasamata, lit., 'What's the matter?', which seems not to have been passed on to HCE), HCE was never required to develop a bimorphemic set. However, the similarities above are so close that we can predict that any creole which did not borrow directly from its superstrate would develop a set of forms along these lines.
Passive
Equivalents
Passive constructions
in creoles
are extremely
rare, and
those that exist
(the wordu
and ser
passives in
PP, cf.
Markey and
Fodale 1980;
the gay
passive in
MC and
SC, cf.
Corne 1977;
and the
get
passive in
72 ROOTS OF LANGUAGE
GC) are
either marginal
to the
language or
relatively recent
super strate
borrowings, or both.
The general
pattern of
creoles is
described by Markey
and Fodale
(1980)
as "rampant
lexical diathesis";
for any
V-transitive, N
V N
will be
interpreted as
"actor-action-patient,"
while any N
V will
be interpreted
as "patient-action":
/86/ GC: dem a ponish abi
'They are making us suffer'
/87 I GC: abi a ponish
'We are suffering/being made to suffer'
/88/ JC: dem plaan di tri
'They planted the tree'
/89/ JC: di tri plaan
'The tree was planted'
/90/ HCE: dei wen teik foa bead
'They took four boards'
/91/ HCE: foa boad wen teik
'Four boards were taken'
We shall return to structures of this type in Chapter 3.
We have
now surveyed
seven areas
of the
grammar in
addition to the
five already
examined in
greater depth.
Of those seven,
HCE shows
substantial identity
with all
other creoles
in four
(existential/
possessive, adjective as
verb, questions,
and passive
equivalents); substantial
iden tity with
a number
of other
creoles in
one (copula);
and little
simi larity in
two (negation,
question-words). Thus,
out of
the twelve
areas, HCE is
identical with
all or
with a
large percentage
of creoles
in eight, shows
a fair
degree of
similarity in
two, and
differs sharply
in two, one
of which
(negation) may
well have
followed the
regular creole
pattern before
decreolization set
in.
This degree of identity is quite remarkable when we consider
that HCE shares none of the substratum languages of the other creoles
'
CREOLE 73
except that
a superstrate
language for
some creoles was
a substrate
language in
HCE, i.e.,
Portuguese! However,
there is
nothing in
the grammar of
HCE except
perhaps stei
as locative
that
one can
point to as
having stemmed
from Portuguese
influence. The
only thing HCE
seems to
have in
common with.other
creoles (apart
from the
simi lar social
conditions that
gave birth
to them)
is that
all have
European superstrates, a
fact which
has been
used to caution
creolists against
premature universalist claims
(Reinecke 1977).9
However,
since practi
cally all
the common
features of
creoles are
not only
not shared
by, but run
dead counter
to the
structural tendencies
of,
Western Euro
pean languages
(the latter
have well-established
single copulas,
well established
passives, use
subject-verb or
subject-auxiliary
inversion in
questions, etc.),
no one could
invoke this
shared ancestry
to explain creole
similarities unless
he were
to propose
that creoles,
like naughty
children, do
everything the
opposite of
what their
parents tell
them to do!
However, an earlier work of mine (Bickerton 1974) that was limited to a discussion of TMA systems has been the subject of a number of criticisms, several to the effect that there were a number of exceptions to the generalizations made therein. I shall therefore deal with the issues raised in the most cogent and extensive of these criti cisms, namely, Muysken (1981a), before going on to show that all the genuine divergences from the classic TMA pattern can be accounted for by the impingement on that pattern of three factors. Two of these factors are quite extraneous and have already been discussed: influence of the antecedent pidgin and language change. A third will have to wait until Chapter 4 for a full explanation; for the time being, let us call it "indeterminacy in semantic space."
Muysken challenges my analysis of creole TMA systems by evidence drawn from six languages: Papiamentu, Negerhollands, Senegal Kriol, Seychellois, Tok Pisin, and Siio Tomense. Data from two of these are quite irrelevant to the issues involved. Tok Pisin has already been ruled as having arisen under circumstances so vastly different from those of the classic creoles that the fact that it is now some people's
74 ROOTS
OF
LANG
UAGE
native language-hence,
nominally a
creole-has
no bearing
on the
present discussion.
Senegal Kriol
is described
by Muysken
himself as an
"inter-tribal
lingua franca
which may
have had
native speakers
in the past
and which
has some
recent ones
now in
urban areas";
since he
himself is
forced to
admit that
this checkered
history may have
"given it
a very
marked, deviant
character," one
wonders why
he should have
bothered to
present data
from it.
Negerhollands is,
or rather
was, a
genuine creole
in the
terms of this
study, but
there are
at least
two reasons
why evidence
drawn from it cannot
stand up
against evidence
from languages
which are still vital.
First, the
language is
dead; one has
to rely
entirely on
printed sources. This
may not
present a
genuine obstacle
to the
writing of
grammars of
classical languages,
but the
case of
creoles is
quite dif
ferent. If
one takes
the text
of a
Hittite law
or a
Sanskrit prayer,
one can
be reasonably
certain that
it was
written by
a native
speaker; if one
takes any
text of
Negerhollands, one
can be
certain that
it was not
written by
a native
speaker. As
with virtually
all other
creoles, texts-whether
they take
the form
of fact
or fiction,
catechism or
simulated dialogue-were
written by
Europeans, with
all the
biases of
their time
and without
any special
linguistic skills
or training.
Many of the texts
were written
by missionaries,
who are
notorious for
pro ducing
Europeanized varieties
of pidgins
and creoles
wherever they
go (Voorhoeve
1971).
This is
not to
say that
a European,
even a
Euro pean
missionary, could
not on
occasion
accurately represent
a creole.
The problem
is knowing
when a
creole is
being
accurately represented.
For example,
there is
one excellent
literary source
for GC:
Quow (1877).
It is
too
excellent, if
anything, because
it gives
several stylistic
levels without
the facts
that might
enable one
to sort
them out. There
are also
a number
of other
sources, of
widely varying
quality. If I
had had
to write
a GC
grammar from
written sources
only, there
is no way
that I
could have
learned to
prefer Quow
whenever he
is in
conflict with
other evidence;
that knowledge
came from having
four years of
unrestricted access
to native
speakers.10
Consequently,
my work would
have seriously
misrepreseted
the language.
CREOLE 75
The second reaso11 against using Negerhollands as evidence for any general creole tendency is that although languages, like people, die, they do not, like 5ome people, drop dead. On the contrary, like Charles II, they are an unconscionable time a-dying, and since we know that in language death languages become severely distorted, but do not know at what time the process started, there is no way in which we can be certain what any text represents-whether the full flush of the lan guage, the early onset of decrepitude, or the final phases of decay, in which key forms are lost or, worse, replaced by forms &om competing languages and dialects. For these reasons, we can dismiss the third of Muysken's six languages.
This leaves PP, SC, and ST. Muysken does not state where he acquired the data from Sao Tomense. To the best of my knowledge, there are only two recent descriptions of the ST TMA system-Valkoff 1966 and Ferraz 1979-although perhaps one should say that there are three, since Valkoff gives two different ones in the same chapter. His account is a somewhat tortuous one, and the exact status of these two descriptions is far from clear; he seems to suggest that the fll'st is in some sense hypothetical, though whether intended as a reconstruc tion of some earlier phase of ST, or of proto-Bight-of-Benin, is far from dear. Be that as it may, one of the two forms he specifically stars as hypothetical turns up as real in Muysken's account, while four forms that appear in his second descriptio11 do not appear in the first. Ferraz mentions Valkoff's work but does not discuss it; nor does he explain why, or even note, that his own account differs substantively from either of Valkoff's. Finally, Muysken's account bears scam resemblance to any of the previous three.
In Table 2.1 on the following page, the various auxiliaries and combinations of auxiliaries claimed to occur in ST are arranged along the horizontal axis, and the four accounts (V1 and V,. Valkoff 1966; F, Ferraz 1979; M, Muysken 1981a) alo11g the vertical. Pluses and minuses have the same values as in distinctive feature tables.
76 ROOTS OF LANGUAGE
tava ka ta ka sa ka te di ka bi ka te
+ + +
+ + +
+
+ + + +
Table 2.1:
Four accounts
of the
ST TMA
system
In addition, Muysken's account suggests four more forms ( tava ka te, tava ka bi, sa ka te, and sa k a bi) which are not attested anywhere else, although to do him justice this impression may merely result from a faulty formalism. Even making allowances for this, he attests four forms that the other sources do not attest, and he fails to attest two that both the other writers attest, as Table 2.1shows.
If this
picture seems
confused ,
the reader
had better
not even
at" tempt to
follow the
names which
the various
tenses, modes,
and aspects are
given by
these three
authors. I
shall give
a single
example. The names
of the
ka
+
V
form
are given,
respectively, as:
incompletive aorist,
Valkoff 1
;
habitual,
Valkoffi ;
aorist, Ferraz;
incompletive, Muysken.
This pattern
is followed
throughout. If
a tense,
mode, or aspect
is mentioned
in two
accounts, it
has two
names; if
in three,
three names; if
in four,
four names.
Sometimes the
differences in
name merely
disguise the
semantic similarities
of the
accounts; sometimes
they mark
real conflicts;
sometimes it is
impossible to
tell. In
one case where
there is
a dear
similarity between
Valkoff's and
Ferraz's accounts,
Mnysken is
dearly
wrong. ¥alkoff
calls tava
+
V
"completive
CREOLE 77
in the past," Ferraz calls it "pluperfect," but it is obvious from their example sentences that whatever it is (and it looks like the anterior of the present analysis), it is not a simple past-which is what Muvsken says it is. Here, of course, the evidence of Ferraz and Valko ff suports the position that Muysken is attacking.
. . Muysken's analysis is supported by two example sentences. The ongmal form of the analysis he is attempting to undermine, in Bicker ton (1975:Chapter 2), is supported by ninety-eight example sentences. Further comment should be superfluous. Until someone is prepared to devote to the analysis of the ST system at least a fraction of the amount f areful work that went into the analysis of the GC system, we can d1sm1ss the fourth of Muysken's six counterexemplary systems.
The wo remaining systems, those of PP and SC, have TMA sys tems too w1dely known to undergo much distortion, although even here Muysken's account is unsatisfactory in several respects. However, sine the features of these and other systems which differ from my pred1ct1ons have been mentioned by other writers (see Hill 1979), I shall not comment further on Muysken's particular analysis, although I shall return to some broader aspects of his paper in Chapter 4.
The major and, if we were to eliminate sloppy scholarship,
perhaps the only deviations from the regular creole TMA system are the following:
The presence in Crioulo of an anterior marker, ba, that follows rather than precedes the main verb.
BJ The presence in Papiamentu of an irrealis marker, lo, that may occur before rather than after the subject.
C) The presence in certain creoles (e.g., Papiamentu, Palenquero, Papia Kristang, and Negerhollands) of tense markers that look more like +past than +anterior.
DJ The presence in Indian Ocean creoles of two markers, ti and
(fi)n, which compete for some kind of pastness, and two
markers, pu and a( va), which compete for some kind of irrealis.
78 ROOTS OF LANGUAGE
E) The merging of iteratives/habituals with either punctuals or irrealis, claimed to occur in a number of creoles ( cf. Taylor 1971), thus reducing the nonpunctual category to no more than a progressive/ durative.
The first two deviations involve only syntactic aspects of TMA systems, while the other three involve semantic aspects. It will be convenient if we take (A) and (B) together since both arise from the nature of antecedent pidgins.
Alleyne ( 1979), in arguing against the existence of a pidgin-creole cycle, claims that no vestiges of pidgins can be found in creoles. Tis, if true, would be unsurprising- as unsurprising as the fact that we fmd no trace of the caterpillar in the butterfly, and for similar reasons. In fact, the data now to be surveyed show some exceptions to the general irrecoverability of pre-creole pidgins.
·.. As is widely known (but see Labov [1971] for explicit discus- sion), pidgins express temporal relations by means of sentence adverbs, in clause-external position, which indicate the temporal sequence of events. HPE has two, baimbai 'then, later, afterward', and pau 'done; already, finished':
/92/ bambai mi waif hapai, bambai wan lil boi kam
'Then my wife got pregnant, and later a little boy was born'
CREOLE 79
'earlier" sequence-marker into a past, anterior, or completive), and
mcorporate them into an Aux category. But this development is the creole exception rather than the creole rule.
When HCE developed out of HPE, neither pau nor baimbai underwent any change of meaning, nor were they incorporated into Aux. Two quite different forms, bin and go, were selected to express anterior and irrealis, respectively. Pau and baimbai are retained as option, clause-external adverbs, but their frequency in HCE drops dramatically compared with their frequency in HPE (in the set of recordings which most accurately reflect basilectal HCE, bin and go
occur a total of 433 times, while pau and baimbai occur a total of 38 times; Bickerton 1977:Tables 3.1, 3.6, 3.9).
Good data on pidgins are even harder to come by than good data on creoles, and data f any kind on the antecedent pidgins of any creole but HCE are simply nonexistent ; however, I still think that rconstruction is osible if we make the simple and reasonable assump tion that other p1dgms resembled HPE in taking their "later" marker from some temporal adverb and their "earlier" marker from some verb with the general meaning of finish ( the meaning of pau in Hawaiian). We can then go on to show that while a majority of creoles decisively rejected "later" markers, most, if not all, accepted "earlier" markers with a marginal status, while some, at a later stage, allowed them,
ore or less grudgingly, to occupy positions within Aux. This is under
J 9 J /
pau wrk frrudd, gu daw1
'After work on Friday, we went dcwn to K::rnai'
andable since, if we are right, "earlier" markers have a verbal source. hile "later" ones have a nonverbal source. .
Most creole irrealis markers are derived from verbs or auxiliaries.
Both
baimbai
and
pau
can
occur
clause-finally,
although
this
is
much
more frequently the case with pau; another speaker might well have begun /93/ with fraidei, hanahana pau . . . 'On Friday, when work was over . . .'.
If creoles were, as they are popularly supposed to be, no mor than "expansions" of pidgins, one would expect them to take markers of this kind, transmute them into obligatory markers of tense, modal ity, or aspect (the "later" sequence-marker into a future or irrealis, the
· nglish creole go is an obvious case; SR sa is usually (I am not sure if orrectly) attributed to Eng. shatl, JC wi to Eng. will. The form that nderlies most French creole irrealis markers is Fr. va '( 3rd pers. sing.) o', yielding ava, reduced to a. LAC ke and ST ka remain mysterious; or te latter, Ferraz (1979) suggests two possible sources-Bini ya, an real1s marker, and Twi ka 'to be usual'-while another possible source
Pg. /icar 'remain'. Only a few Portuguese creoles show a different ndency, e.g., PK logo, derived from the adverbial Pg. logo 'next,
80 ROOTS OF LANGUAGE
soon' and reducible to lo. And lo, as we have seen, is the Papiamentu form which deviates from the regular model.
We will return to lo in a moment. First, let us look at the prove nance of ba. Most creoles have an "earlier" form which is derived from a verb with the meaning 'finish'; in addition to pau, we find
!OC (fi)n from Fr. fini 'finished (p. part.)', English creole don from another past participle, Eng. done, and Portuguese creole ( ka)ba from Pg. acabar 'finish' ( kaba is found in SR also). Looking over the range of creoles, it would seem that such markers can have three distinct distributions.
First, they
may remain
as marginal
particles, occurring
option ally
in clause-final
position. This
state is
exemplified by
SR, in
which kaba
can only
occur clause-fmally
and is
never incorporated
into Aux. The same
is true
of PP
caba.
In
basilectal GC,
don
often occurs
clause finally (cf.
Bickerton 1975:Examples
2.65-67).
Second, they
may be
incorporated into
Aux but
without its being
possible to
combine them
with other
Aux constituents.
This state
is exemplified
by mesolectal
GC don
and possibly
also JC
and
other Caribbean don and by HC fin.
Third, they may be incorporated into Aux where they may combine with other Aux constituents quite freely. This state is exem plified by.Krio (KR) don, and IOC (fi )n, among others.
If we
were working
with a
static-synchronic model,
we would have
to stop
with this
statement. However,
since we
have to
work with a
dynamic model
in order
to account
for creole
development, we
can next propose
that these
three "states"
in fact
constitute stages
in a diachronic
development and
exemplify a
gradual process
of incorpora
tion which
is well
advanced in some
creoles and
has not
begun in others.
In order
to prove
that states
in
different
languages show
differ ent stages
of the
same process,
it is
desirable to
be able
to point
to languages in
which two
stages co-exist
synchronically.
Basilectal GC
has both postclausal
and preverbal
don,
the latter
becoming obligatory
in the mesolectal
varieties; thus
GC represents
the transition
between states one
and
two. Evidence
for I0C
is conflicting,
but by
at least
CREOLE 81
some accounts, stages intermediate between noncombinability and free combinability (states two and three) are to be found there.
Crioulo ha clearly derives from kaba, which in accordance with its Portuguese etymon is stressed on the final syllable. Papiarnentu lo equally clearly derives from Pg. logo. We can assume that in Port uguese pre-creole pidgins generally logo and k aba were, respectively, the "later" and "earlier" forms that corresponded to HPE baimbai and pau. Papiamentu retained both ; Crioulo (as far as we can tell with present, inadequate data) retained only the second; and both pp lo
:.nd CR ba were incorporated semantically into the TMA system
\1.e:, were .al.lotted the expected meanings of irrea!is and anterior) while rema.mmg syntactically outside it (i.e., retained clause-external
?osition, obligatory in the case of ba, co-varying with subject type m the case of lo).
It is one thing to show that deviations (A) and (BJ (p. 77) could ave ansen from pidgin features; it is quite another to explain why m these two cases, but not in others, pidgin characteristics should have been able to override creole ones. However, we can make what is at
least a
very plausible
conjecture.
. . The
only other
member of
the pidgin-creole
family
in which p1dgm
sequence-markers have
graduated to
creole auxiliaries
is Tok
isin .
(TP). Here,
"ltee'-marker
baimbai
reduced to
bai,
acquired Irreal.1s
meamng, .and
ts 1n
the process
of being
incorporated into
the au:xihary .by
native speakers
(Sankoff and
Laberge 1974);
"earlier"
marker pinis
(from Eng.
finish
)
has followed
a similar
course except that
it ontinues
to occur
only postverbally.
I have
consistently 'claimed
that differences
between TP
and classic
creoles would
result from
differenc s
in their
histories, in
particular the
period of
several genera
tions which
TP passed
as a
pidgin prior
to creolization.
Such a
period would allow
time for
the original
sequence-markers to
become firm!y
established in
the
language and
to take
on more
tense-like and
modal like meanings
through the
operations of
natural change.
By the
time TP creolfaed,
therefore, it
had already
developed a
complex auxiliary
system, without
any of
the catastrophic
suddenness which,
as we
saw
82 ROOTS OF LANGUAGE
in Chapter
1,
characterizes true
creoles. The
first creole
generation in TP
was therefore
presented with
a fait
accompli; all
it could
do was accept
the markers
bequeathed to
it and
carry out
some minor
cosmetic operations on
baimbai,
phonologically
reducing it
and shifting
it to
a more "appropriate"
position.
The gap
between TP
and true
creoles is
not, of
course, an
abso lute one.
Some of
the features
that distinguish
TP (prolonged
growth period, sustained
bilingualism, etc.)
could be
shared to
a
lesser extent
with some
0£
the true
creoles. In
the case
of Crioulo,
evidence is
flatly contradictory:
"Crioulo .
. .has
no native
speakers" (Alleyne
1979); "Crioulo
. . .
[is] the
ft'tst
language of
many who
are born
and bred
in the
main towns"
(Wilson 1962:vii).
A plausible
compromise would
seem to
be late
creolization followed
by
the persistence
of a
small native-speaker
core within
a wide
lingua-franca penumbra.
Under
such circumstances, a
more gradual
transition
from
pidgin to
creole, with
concomitant retention
of more
pidgin features,
is certainly
a
possibility.
Curaqao, home
of Papiamentu,
might at
fast sight
look
very different from
the
Guinea of
Ctioulo-a Caribbean
island
where sus"
tained bilingualism
would
have been
impossible. However,
Curaao
differs from
most Caribbean
islands
in that
it
is extremely
dry
and infertile.
For over
a century,
before the
Dutch seized
it, and
indeed to some
extent thereafter,
it
served as a
staging post
in the
slave trade, a
place where
slaves
were held
and seasoned
while awaiting
trans portation to
other
points in
the
Caribbean or
Latin America.
With a constant
turnover in
the population,
and
transients always
heavily outnumbering
the minority
who remained,
it may
well be
that a
pidgin stage persisted
here
much longer
than it
did elsewhere
in the
Caribbean, or at
least long
enough for
more pidgin
features to
establish themselves.
Clearly, in
both cases,
more historical
study is
needed, but
the hypothe
sis of
somewhat delayed
creolization would
both explain
the phe
nomena involved
and accord
with our
present knowledge
of
social
history.
\
CREOLE 83
Let us turn now to Deviation C ( p. 77), the past versus anterior issue. In the first place, it must be made clear that GC, SR, and HC were generally claitned to have past-tense markers, prior to my re analysis of their TMA systems (see, e.g., Hall [1953] for HC, Voorhoeve [1957] for SR, etc.). However, that reanalysis has not been seriously challenged. !l It seems reasonable, therefore, to suppose that in a number of other creoles which Idid not specifically examine, markers are still being described as "past" which in reality are +anterior.
Let us examine a language, Seychelles Creole, of which this claim is frequently made. According to Corne (1977: 102), "the marker ti defines the past, both simple and habit ual"; according to Bollee (1977 :55), "ti expresses the past, definite or indefinite; it is comparable to the past tense in English." However, these confident and sweeping statements are immediately modified by both parties. Corne observes that "once past time has been established in a given situation, ti is frequently omitted," especially in narratives "where, after an initial use (or uses) of ti, much of the remainder of the story may be told with verb forms unmarked for Past (i.e., as a sort of 'historical present')." This "historical present" also crops up in Bailee's second thoughts. While, according to her, the zero or stem form of the verb "has the value of the French present tense"-the reader will note the Euro" centrism that unites these accounts-it also expresses the "historical present" which is "above all others the narrative tense . . . . After a brief introduction in the past, the rest of the story is told in the pres ent." However, she immediately adds a second second thought: "The above is not quite correct; the past often reappears at the opening of a
new paragraph."
Accounts of this nature inevitably arouse one's suspicions, especially as the First Law of Creole Studies states: "Every creolist's analysis can be directly contradicted by that creolist's own texts and citations.'' To demonstrate this law, I will analyze the middle portion
of
the
second
paragraph
of
the
story
Sabotaz
at
de
ser
(Bollee
1977:
166):
84 ROOTS OF LANGUAGE
/94/ Biro leformasjo i resevwar e let sorta lafras,
Bureau information PM receive a letter leaving France
avoje par e garso nome Msje Lezen ki ti ana trat-a,
sent by a fellow name M. Lezen who TNS have thirty years
ki ti ule gaj portre e fij seselwas . , .
who TNS want get portrait a girl Seychellois
Me kom sa zofisje ti kon bje Msje ek Madam Lamur . . . but as the agent TNS know well M. and Mme. Lamur alor igaj e konsiderasjo . , ,
then he take into consideration
'The Bureau of Information received a letter from France, sent by someone called Mr. Lezen, who was thirty years old, and who wanted to obtain a portrait of a Seychellois girl . , . .But as the agent knew Mr. and Mrs. Lamur well . . . he took into considera tion . . .'
Here, as in many other places in Bailee's texts, the narrative switches from "historical present" into "past " and back again, right in mid-paragraph. Even Bollee's final disclaimer, therefore, will not work here. What is the explanation?
The alert
reader will
perhaps have
noticed that
the "historical
present" verbs
that immediately
precede and
follow the
switch into "past"
are both
nonstatives- resevwar
'receive',
gaj{e)
'obtain,
take' while the
three verbs
marked with
ti
are all
statives-ana
'have', ule
'want', and kone 'know'. If we refer back to the sto.ry openings that
both Corne and Bollee mention, we find that the verbs marked there by
ti ate also starives. Folktales almost invariably begin with one or several of these: "Once upon a time there was a girl • . . she was called such and such . . . she had two sisters . . ." It is this simple coincidence that has given rise to the hard-dying creole myth about "narrative tenses" and "historical presents."
In fact, in systems which have the feature anterior, past-reference nonstatives ate unmarked, while past-reference statives receive anterior
\
CREOLE 85
marking (see Bickerton [1975:Chapter 2 ] for an explanation of why this is so). Thus, the distribution of ti and zero in SC texts follows exactly the same rule of anterior marking that affects stative and nonstative pasts in GC, HC, SR, etc.
Bollee and Corne cannot be blamed too heavily for this faulty analysis since SC is not a pure anterior system but one which under went certain changes when the completive (fi)n was incorporated into Aux and permitted to combine with other markers. We shall see the
consequences of this when we return to SC in the discussion of Devia· tion D.
However, there
are creoles
in which
the presence
of the
category past cannot
be attributed
to faulty
analyses. Papiamentu
is
perhaps the best
attested of
these so,
pending adequate
data on
the few
creoles that
seem to
resemble it,
we may
take the
PP model
as typical.
I pro pose
to claim
that wherever
this deviance
is
attested, it
is the
result of either
heavy superstrate
influence on
the pidgin
stage, or
(more prob
able in
the majority
of cases)
subsequent
decreolization.
In the first place, in both HCE and GC, where decreolization phenomena are clear and well understood, the shift from anterior mark ing to past marking represents one of the earliest superstrate-influenced changes (Bickerton 1975, 1977). Even in Sranan, no longer in contact ' ith its superstrate, a imilar change is taking place at least among literate Sranan-Dutch bilmguals as can be seen if we compare the
most recent texts with earlier ones in, e.g., Voorhoeve and Lichtveld (1976).
However, a problem arises in the case of languages for which, unlike GC or SR, no prior anterior stage is attested. Can we reconstruct such a stage from synchronic evidence?
There is a good likelihood that we can. In Bickerton (1980) I showed that we could differentiate between decreolization stages and natural changes: the former changed forms first and functions later; while the latter preserved old forms and gave them new functions. If the changes in PP are due to decreolization, and if there was an original anterior marker, then it follows that whatever is the past
86 ROOTS OF LANGUAGE
marker now
could not
have been
the anterior
marker then;
in decreoli
zation, instead
of the
original marker
changing its
function, a
new marker is
first adopted
alongside of
it, otiginally
with an
identical
meaning (did
alongside
GC
bin,
wen
alongside HCE
bin),
and then
gradually changes
its
meaning to
+past while
the original
anterior marker
disappears or,
if
we are
lucky, remains
fossilized in
some social or
grammatical corner
of the
language. So,
if we
are both
correct and
· lucky, we
should be
able to
find in
PP both
a synchronic
past marker
and some
vestige of
the otiginal
anterior marker
it displaced.
The PP past marker is a, presumably cognate with PQ a, PK ya all of which most probably derive from Pg. ja 'already'. Adverbs, as we have seen, are not a good source for creole TMA markers. Anterior markers are most often recruited from a past copula form: Fr. ete
yielding French creole ti, te, etc.; Eng. been yielding English creole bin, ben, etc.; and Pg. estava yielding ST (and other Bight-of-Benin creole) tava. Tava/ taba is therefore what one would predict as an anterior marker in the original stage of any Portuguese creole.
Taha is of course well attested for PP, and its distribution is most
interesting. Unlike other auxiliaries, it cannot occur alone before a verb, but only in conjunction with nonpunctual ta:
/95/ *mi taba lesa
/96/ mi a lesa
'I read (past)'
/97/ mi ta lesa
'I am reading'
/ 981 mi tabata lesa
'I was reading'
The fusion of taba and ta clearly recalls GC bina, of similar meaning and origin (i.e., the conjunction of anterior and nonpunctual attested, l believe, for every creole without exception). If a had formed part of the original set of auxiliaries, whether with past or anterior meaning, we would have expected to find the form *ata for past-progressive sen- tences such as /98/. '
CREOLE 87
We may therefore
propose the
following scenario
for Papia
mentu, Originally,
it had
taba
anterior and
ta
nonpunctual·,
permitting the formation
of tabata
(it is
hard to
think of
any other
way in
which this form
could have
been derived).
Decreolizatio11 then
began, via contact
between PP
and the
Spanish of
the Venezuelan
mainland only a
ew miles
away. Spanish
ya
could
have been
the model
as easily as
.Pg. ja;
indeed,
for PP-Spanish
bilinguals, ya
and ha,
the
Spanish 3rd pets.
perfective marker,
could
have easily
reinforced one
another to
merge in
a.
The
result of
borrowing a
as a
past marker
would have been
to bring
Papiamentu,
phonologically as
well as
semantically, n1ore in
line with
its prestigious
neighbor. But
by the
time a
entered the
language, tabata
would already
have come
to be
perceived as
a single unit
(as its
modern orthography
suggests) and
would thus
have survived the
subsequent disappearance
of
taba.
Similarly, ti
pe,
an SC
form of
comparable meaning,
was retained
even when
some anterior
fortctions ofti
were taken
over by
(fi
]n.
A further argument for an original anterior-nonanterior distinc tion in· Papiall1e11tu comes from the synchronic distribution of zero forms. Fol" example, Goilo (1953:107) observes that stem forms express the present indicative for verbs such as gusta 'like', quier 'love', jama 'be called', etc.-i.e., statives--while all other verbs form the same tense with ta. It should be made quite clear that this is not aparallel to the English habitual-progressive distinction. In English,
we can have I write as well as I want, and there exists the opposition
I write/l am writing. Papiamentu presents quite a different picture:
/99/ mi quier esaquinan 'I want these'
/160/ *mita quier esaquinan
/101/ *miskirbi buki
/102/ mi ta skirbi buki
'lwrite books/am writing a book'
If Papiamentu started life with a simple past-present opposition,
88 ROOTS
OF
LANGUAGE
expressed by a versus ta, then the fact that statives in the present cannot take ta, while nonstatives must, becomes merely a mysterious anomaly. However, if it began with an anterior-nonanterior opposition, the fact is well motivated. In all such systems, present-reference statives are unmarked (since by definition they cannot take nonpunctual mark ing), and present-reference nonstatives are obligatorily marked with the nonpunctual morpheme (since any event or action that is ongoing in the present must be either durative or part of a series, whereas, con versely, any punctual event or action must be over, i.e., in the past, by the time it can be referred to!). The distribution of zeros and nonpunctuals in PP is identical to that of synchronic SR or basilectal GC, except for one thing: in the latter, past punctuals, as well as present statives, are zero-marked (again, Bickerton (1975:Chapter 2] explains why this should be so). In Papiamentu, a has moved in to fill the "vacuum" created by zero-marked past-reference nonstatives, thereby bringing the PP TMA system closer to European models, but, again, as with tabata, leaving clear traces of the more creole system that must have existed at an earlier stage.12
We can now turn to Deviation D: the fact that MC and SC contain both ti and (fi )n, a and pu.
First, I shall have to comment on the state-of-the-art in Indian Ocean creoles. In MC and SC, and a fortiori in Reunion Creole, that state is perhaps best exemplified by the following pessimistic remarks of Corne (1977:94-95):
A close study of SC preverbal markers has been made by Bollee, by Papen and by myself, and the results of our efforts do not always coincide . . . . The sociolinguistic background of our informants is to some extent different, and this alone is <1uite possibly the source of conflicting data. It seems likely that some speakers categorise given markers differently from other speakers.
\
CREOLE 89
Methods which make it possible, without invoking extralinguistic data, to systematically order and account for all variations in such systems were publicly presented by DeCamp in 1968 (DeCamp 1971), refined and extended by C.-J. Bailey (1973, etc.), and applied to the analysis of a seemingly far worse preverbal chaos in Bickerton (1975), afte; they had been proven effective in a number of other areas where creoles showed similar variation (Bickerton 1971, 1973a, 1973b, etc.). The bibliographies of Baker, Bailee, Corne, and other IOC scholars (Carayol and Chaudenson [1977] is a distinguished exception) betray no awareness of any of this work, which I suppose merely reflects the parochialism that afflicts the field. Given this methodological time lag, anything one says about !OC TMA systems must be treated as provisional.
Combinations of markers form the liveliest areas of dispute. According to Baker (1972) and Valdman (1980), (ji )n will combine only with ti in MC; according to Moorghen (1975), it will also combine with a and pu. According to Bailee (1977), (fi )n will combine with a and pu in SC, but not with pe; according to Corne (1977), n pe com binations are found, in addition to the others.
A dynamic analysis can easily reconcile all these apparent contra
dictions. It
was suggested
earlier that
between the
second stage
of (fi
jn
incorporation-movement
into Aux-and
the third
stage of
(fi)n
incorporation-
free combinability
with other
preverbal markers-we
would expect
to fmd
intermediate stages,
and the
data in
the previous
paragraph suggest
just such stages,
preserved synchronically
in the Indian
Ocean population
either by
different groups,
or at
different stylistic
levels, or
both. If
those data
are correct,
it would
appear that the
combinability of
(fi)n
began with
ti
in SC,
spread to
MC, while
in SC it
extended
also to
pu
and a,
and
(for at
least some speak
ers) spread
to pu
and a
in MC
while it
was extending
to pe
in SC
a classic
demonstration of
Bailevan wave
theory.13 This
proposal is made
all
the more
plausible by
he fact
that combinability
proceeds from tense,
the leftmost
Aux constituent,
to modal,
the second
left most, to
aspect, the
rightmost (which,
perhaps coincidentally,
perhaps
90 ROOTS OF LANGUAGE
not, is a conjunction of two members of the same class, (ji }n being a completive, therefore aspectual, and therefore, initially perhaps, being in the same slot as pe and thus barred from co-occurring with it).
We are now almost ready to consider what would have been the repercussions of an invasion by (fi)n of a classic creole system. First, however, we must note a particular characteristic of TMA systems which, thongh seemingly obvious, has been ignored by virtually all work up to and including Comrie's (1976) influential study of aspect. Meillet's famous observation that "language is a system in which every thing keeps its place" has the corollary that if a new element intrudes, everything must shift its place somewhat; while the latter statement may not be true of languages considered as wholes, it is certainly true for tight little grammatical subsystems like those of TMA. A TMA system may be compared to a cake, a cake that is always the same size, for TMA systems, whether simple or complex, all have to cover the same semantic area: every verb has to have some tense, mood, aspect, or combination of these applied to it, for there are (pace some creolists) no such things as "TMA-neutral" sentences.
But a cake may be split up into five, or eight, or ten slices, just as a TMA system can divide its semantic area among five, or eight, or ten TMA markers and/or combinations of markers. If a cake is divided into five slices, while another identical to it is divided into eight slices, there is no way in which each of the slices in Cake A can contain exactly the same amount of material as each of the slices in Cake B. In other words, how much, and exactly what, is contained in each slice will be largely determined by the number of slices. This is exactly the state of affairs in TMA systems throughout language; what each marker of modality, tense, or aspect means will be largely determined by how many markers of these things there are in the system and by what each of the others mean. Facts such as these are, however, ignored by most scholars in the field, who strive to fit all phenomena into the same conceptual straitjacket, and who, when
'
CREOLE 91
this fails, as fail it must, then seek, like Comrie, some kind of ideal type of the "Progressive" or the "Perfective."
The main point to be grasped here is that if you mark out a cake
to be cut into n slices, then change your mind and decide to cut n + 1, you can only get your extra slice at the expense of one or more of the otiginals. Thus, if (ji )n were introduced as a ninth term into the classic eight-term creole system, it could only be accommodated by robbing the semantic domain of one or more existing markers.
Since {fi )n conjoined first with ti, it is not surprising that ti was
its main
victim. Admittedly,
ti
held
its ground
with statives,
as we
saw in
/94/,14
and in
the nonpunctual
ti
pe
structure;
the picture
with punctual nonstatives
is more
complex. To
clarify it,
we need
to refme the
concept of
anterior, which
we can
provisionally define
as "prior
to the current
focus of
discourse." But
current focus
may be
explicit (where the
times of
an earlier
and later
event are
directly contrasted),
or implicit (where the relationship between the earlier and later events is simply assumed), or there may be nothing prior to current focus.
.The situation will become clearer with the following examples:
/103/ Current focus, nothing prior:
Eng.: Bill has
come/came to
see you GC: Bi!
(don) kom
fi sii
yu
/104/ Prior event, current focus implicit:
Eng.: Bill came/*has/*had come to see you yesterday, too GC: Bil bin kom/*don kom/*kom fi sii yu yestide an aal
/105/ Prior event, current focus explicit:
Eng.: When I got here, Bill had come/*has come/*came already
GC: wen mi riich, bi! bin kom/*don kom/*kom aredi
In /104/ current focus is on the present, second visit of Bill implied by too; this, English can handle by one of the means available for /103/, but the anterior system of GC cannot. Example /104/ has to be treated exactly like /105/ in GC; /105/ must be treated differ-
92 ROOTS OF LANGUAGE
ently from /104/ in English. This illustrates just one of the many differences between past-nonpast and anterior-nonanterior systems.
Corne (1977:107) has an illuminating minimal pair which shows that SC behaves much more like GC than like English. on "current focus, nothing prior" cases like /106/ and "prior event, current focus implicit" cases like /108/; GC translations follow each example:
/106/ mo n vin isi pur eksplik . . •
I COMP come here for explain
'I have come here to explain (and I'm still here)'
/107/ GC: mi (don) kom ya fi ekspleen • . .
/108/ m6 ti vin isi pur eksplik . . .
'I came (on a previous occasion) to explain (and then went away again)'
/109/ mi bin kom ya fi ekspleen . . .
The implicit current focus is of course the speaker's most recent arrival, since he could not say I came unless he were here again.
However, when current focus is explicit, SC and GC part com pany (SC example from Corne [1977:108] ) :
/ 11O/ leta mo ti atre dll. lasam, i ti n fini mll.z s6 banan 15
time I TNS enter in room, he TNS COMP finish eat his banana 'When I entered the room, he had finished eating his banana'
/111/ wen mi kom iin di ruum, ibin finish (*bin don finish) nyam
i banana
In other words, it is only where there is prior reference with explicit current focus-i.e., when two past events have to be explicitly ordered with respect to one another-that ti n encroaches on the domain of anterior ti, However, reference of this kind is probably the most per· ceptually obvious of anterior functions (certainly it is the easiest to teach in creole courses), and its loss to a completive cannot but serve
to erode an anterior-based system and tilt it in the direction of a past-
CREOLE 93
Anterior is
further eroded
once one
begins to
get (
ti)
a
n
and (ti)
pu
n
constructions.
In the
classic system,
irrealis handles
condi
tionals a1.1d
there is
no distinction
between probable
and improbable
conditions,
so long
as they
are not
counterfactual
conditions:
/112/ GC: mi go tel am if mi sii am
'I'll tell him if I see him' or 'l would tell him if l saw him'
Counterfactuals are expressed by a combination of anterior and irrealis: anterior because current focus in such cases is always on the conse quences of not having done whatever one didn't do; and irrealis because the action or event in question is an imaginary one:
/113/
GC:
if
mi
bin
sii
am
mi
bin
go
tel
am
'If I had seen him I would have told him'
. In SC, ti a n (and less commonly, ti pit n) naturally takes over from a prior ti a, the "pastest" among conditions: counterfactuals such
as /113/, yielding sentences such as /114/ (example from Corne 1977:
109):
/H4/
mo
ti
a
n
marie,
si
mo
pa
ti
mizer
I TNS MOD COMP marry, if I not TNS poor
'l would have gotten married if I weren't poor' [115/ GC: mi bin go mari if mi na bin puur
The result
of this
development is
another change
in
the system.
The coming into
existence of
ti
a
n
does
not automatically
remove the former
expression
of counterfactuals,
ti
a;
ti
a
remains
in the lan
guage, and
what remains
in the
language has
to mean
something. The
consequence of
the ti
a
n
invasion
is therefore
the shifting
of ti
a
one step
down the
hierarchy of
conditions, from
impossible to
merely
improbable (if X , I would Y)-again, the example is from Corne (1977: 106):
based system. '
94 ROOTS OF LANGUAGE
{116/ si u ti aste!avian, iti a maze
if you TNS buy meat, he TNS MOD eat
'If you bought some meat, he would. eat it'
/117{ GC: if yu bai milt, igo nyam am
A further erosion of anterior terrain is indicated by the structure of the subordinate clauses in these examples. Note that the subordinate clause in counterfactual 1115/ requires anterior marking but that the subordinate clause in the merely improbable {117/ does not ; this is classic anterior marking. However, the subordinate clauses in both counterfactual /114/ and merely improbable /116/ are marked with ti, presumably because subordinate clause marking is dragged down, so to speak, by the shift of ti a main-clause marking from counterfactuals
to improbables.
In other words, once you turn a completive loose in a classic creole TMA system, the only consequence must be a drastic remodeling of that system. Some creoles (SR, basilecta!GC, HC) have kept their completives under control either by keeping them out of Aux al together or by allowing them in but not letting them combine with other auxiliaries. It is not coincidence that these creoles are ones which have kept the classic TMA system virtually intact. On the other hand, creoles that have let the completive have the run of the house such as SC, MC, and Krio-have, in consequence, had to change their TMA systems to a point at which reconstruction of the original system becomes quite difficult, although not-thanks to the careful work of Corne and others-impossible.
The curious reader may well ask, "Why is it that some systems
have let
loose their
completives, while
others have
not?" Ihave
no answer
to that,
at
present. Suffice
it to
say that
doing so
must remain an
option within
any theory
of linguistic
change; if
the option
is taken, certain
results must
follow, as
night, day;
if it
is not,
they will
not. It would
be interesting
to know
why, but
the fact
that we
do not
can in no
way affect
the validity
of the
foregoing analysis.
'
CREOLE 95
The other main divergence of IOC from the classic model is the presence of two "future" forms, a and pu. Several things are at issue here. One of them is why either form should be limited to future, rather than being a true irrealis. In fact , on the evidence of Corne (1977:103), pu retains conditional meaning, if only in subordinate clauses, and thus still covers a large part of the semantic area of ir realis:
{118{ ipa ti kone ki i pu fer
he not TNS know what he MOD do 'He didn't know what he would do'
/119/ GC: i na (bin) no wa igo du/wa fe du
The GC translation is instructive in several respects. First, the optionality of bin serves to underscore another characteristic of ante rior as opposed to past marking. Expressions like he didn't know are ambiguous between 'he didn't know, but he knows now' and 'he didn't know then and he still doesn't know'. In the first reading, bin is obli gatorily present since this reading represents another instance of prior event (or rather, prior state, in this case) with implicit current focus, i.e., upon the change in state of the person referred to. In the second reading, bin is obligatorily absent since the state of not knowing is a continuing one, and there is therefore nothing prior to refer to.
Second, we see again that the range of a true irrealis (Ge go) parallels at least part of the range of an SC marker. But the third point is perhaps the most interesting. He did not know what he would do is semantically close to, if not quite synonymous with, he did not know
what to do. The GC sentence ina no wa fi du more accurately trans
lates the second of these sentences.
F'i (which often takes the form Ju ) derives from Eng. for, while pu derives from Fr. pour 'for'. Fi can also be a complementizer, as can pu. Fi can occur as an auxiliary in its own right:
/120{ mi fi go
'I should{ought to go'
96 ROOTS OF LANGUAGE
Note that Ji is narrowly restricted to a meaning of obligation, while it is a verbal auxiliary. When it is a complementizer, however, it and its cognates .in other creoles express irrealis meaning just as pu does, see examples /27 /-/30/ and /35/-/37 / above.
Fi in general does not combine with other auxiliaries, but in GC
CREOLE 97
[1977:23ff., 181ff.]). In fact, the IOC position is far from clear-cut, and MC and SC seem to have developed rather differently. According to Corne (p.c.), pu in MC marks a more definite future. In SC, on the other hand, the precise roles of pu and a are more vague, although the fact that only pu can occur in the scope of negation suggests that here,
it does occasionally occur with bin, and it is tempting to claim that it is
pu may be becoming the less defm'
ite of the two.
starting to do just what (fi)n did in IOC, i.e., combine first of all with the anterior marker. Thus one can have GC /121/:
/121/ mi bin fu nak am
'I should have hit him' or 'I was about to hit him'
The construction is not common in GC, and native speakers are more or less evenly divided as to which gloss is the more appropriate.
Thus, in basilectal GC, with a classic TMA system, only a slight increase in the semantic range of Ji and in the syntactic privileges of
occurrence is needed for the situation to begin to approximate that of SC and MC. All we have to assume is that a process which is begin ning in GC (and which must be latent in any creole since all creoles, presumably- the most drudgingly comprehensive grammars are all too often silent on this score-have an auxiliary of obligation which is ipso factq +irrealis) has been taken a stage or two further in IOC, languages which we already know have a predilection for expanding and complicating Aux.
The rest
of the
story is
simple. As
pu
was
graduating as
a full
fledged competitor
to the
original irrealis
a,
(fi)n
was distorting the
classic system
in such
a way
that the
irrealis scope
of both
markers, a
and pu,
was losing
some of
its conditional
functions
and thus
was getting
closer to
a simple
future. In
any case,
when any
two mor
phemes divide
the semantic
terrain of
"future,"
it is
a highly
natural development that
they should
mark out
their boundaries
in some
way, and that
those boundaries,
while often
vague, should
generally dis
tinguish relatively
likely from
relatively unlikely
events (cf.
the discus
sion of
go
versus
gon,
HCE's
ft'tst
ni,esolectal
replacement, Bickerton
We have now seen how two very natural developments could
have turned a classic creole TMA system into the kind of system we see in IOC today. IOC scholars will doubtless object that the account I have given is a purely conjectural one. That may be; but if it is con jectural, that is only because those scholars have not done the job of tracing the diachronic development of IOC through synchronic resi dues, as was done in Bickerton (1975) for GC. The most anyone can do who does not have direct and unlimited access to the IOC commun ity is to show that similar developments have occurred or are occurring elsewhere in other creoles, which I have done. There is thus a prima fade case for the scenario outlined above; conclusive evidence can only come through the patient sifting of the highly variable data about which all IOC scholars have complained, hut which none of them have yet exploited.
We can now turn to our final deviation-the split between habi tuals and progressives which, according to Taylor (1971), conflates the former with the "completive" (in. the present terminology, zero marked past punctuals) in JC and HC and with the "future" (in the present terminology, irrealis) in CR and ST. Again, as with anterior versus past marking, we must first ask ourselves if the data on which such claims are made are valid. Again, we must answer that at least sometimes they are not.
For example, Hall (1953:31) describes the HC aspect marker ap( e) as "indicating action which is continuing, not yet complete, or future"-in other words, a:p(e) does not include habituals. This, if true, would indicate that the HC system is not a classic TMA system since in that system the nonpunctual category embraces both con-
98 ROOTS OF LANGUAGE
tinuing and habitual actions. However, the First Law of Creole Studies enables us to find, in Hall's own texts, numerous sentences in which ap(e) marks habituals, past as well as nonpast:
/122/ sa k-ap-fe maje, ap-fe maje pou-apeze lwa yo
that which-ASP-make eat, ASP-make eat for appease loa PL
'Whatever they used to give it to eat, they used to give it to eat to appease the African gods'
/123/ tout gas6 chak mekredi ap-pra bou-t-makak yo
all fellow each Wednesday ASP-take stick PL 'Each Wednesday, all the fellows take their sticks'
/124/ tout moun sou-late ap-chache pou-yo viv avek etelijas
all person on-earth ASP-seek for-they live with intelligence 'Everyone on earth tries to live with a head well filled (with
knowledge)'
Although some claims may be disposed of in this way, there remains, as with anteriors, a residue of cases where genuine problems need to be resolved. In this particular case, a new factor enters the system: areas of relative indeterminacy in semantic space. In Chapter 4, where we will try to extract the very roots of semantics, it will become apparent that Deviation E represents an inherent point of weakness in the semantic infrastructure of the TMA system; we will see also that
such puintil
MUST if
11U1uage
to eh
and d
evelop. Howeveri
sun.:e a
full aci.-u
unt
of E dep.nds
"'l
a prior
an
alrsis
o£
the nature
of semantic
space, it
will have
to be
postponed until
that
chapter. ·
For the present, then, we can conclude that the bulk of so-called
"counterexamples" to our analysis of creole TMA systems arises from one of the three following sources:
Inadequate data-gathering
and/or
acceptance of
inaccurate data and/or
faulty analysis
of data.
A slightly longer than normal antecedent period of pidginiza
tion, allowing pidgin features to become fixed.
CREOLE 99
Linguistic change,
internal or
contact-stimulated,
subsequent to
creolization.
In one
or two
cases, (2)
would
distort the
normal process
of creoliza
tion, although
we must
note that
only syntactic,
and not
semantic, aspects of
that process
are affected:
PP lo
and CR
ba
retain
their predicted meanings,
even though
they do
not assume
their predicted
place in
sentence structure.
Being a
subsequent development,
(3)
cannot have
any relevance
to the
process of
creolization itself.
As for (1),
one can
only hope
that this
will disappear
as the
field continues to
develop.
Finally, I shall examine three types of complementation in creoles: complements of perception verbs; factive, nonfactive, and related complement structures; and "serial verb" structures. My aim in doing so will be twofold. First , as in the previous sections of this chapter, I shall seek to show that substantial identities of structure exist throughout creoles, even where these may be masked by ongoing change processes or other factors. But Ialso want to establish certain facts about the nature of creole syntax-facts which will assume a greater significance when we meet them again in Chapters 3 and 4.
In English, the complements of perception verbs consist of onfinite sentences from which aspectual markers are excluded, and e subjects of which have underaone raising: 16
/125/ I saw him leaving the building.
./126/ We can hear them play trombones.
/127 I *I saw he leaving the building.
/128/ *I saw him was leaving the building.
:129/ *We can hear them have played trombones.
hile a superficially similar sentence, /130/, is grammatical, it does not contain a perception-verb complement, but a factive complement that has undergone complementizer deletion:
100 ROOTS OF LANGUAGE
/130/ I saw he was leaving the building.
/131/ I saw that he was leaving the building.
/137I Iheard singing.
CREOLE 101
In creoles,
perception-verb
complements are
fmite, can
contain aspect
markers, and
have subjects
which do
not undergo
raising:
/132/ GC: mi hia dram a nak
Ihear drum ASP beat
'I heard drums beating'
/133/ GC: dem sii ikom
'They saw him come'
Although one might be tempted to gloss /132/ as 'I heard that drums were beating'-along the lines of /130/-such a gloss would be incorrect;
£active complements are introduced by the obligatory particle se,
which we shall return to later:
/134/ GC: mi hia se drom a nak
'I heard THAT drums were beating'
In /133/, the nominative case of the 3rd pers. sing. pronoun is obliga tory; the accusative case is ungrammatical:
/135/ GC: *dem sii am kom
Free occurrence of nonpunctual-aspect a and the ungrammaticality of an accusative form such as would result from raising indicate that the
GC will allow the equivalent of /136/, but not of /137/:
/138/ mi hia bi! a sing
/139/ *mi hia a sing
It is characteristic of languages in general that while they may allow zero subjects in nonfinites, they cannot freely delete subjects in finite clauses, except of course under identity, which does not apply here.
A second argument involves the Propositional Island Constraint (PIC) as proposed by Chomsky (1977). The PIC affects structure of the form:
/140/ . . .x .. '(.l([. ..y . ..j . ..x . ..
and prevents any rule from moving a constituent from position Y to either position X just in case {.l( marks a finite clause. Let us assume that, ignoring some nonrelevant details, the structure underlying both
/132/ and its English equivalent is something like /141/: 17
/141/ s
NP AUX VP
l
I
I Past v s
mi I
embedded sentences in /132/ and /133/ are fmite. At least two further
arguments point in a similar direction.
In English
perception-verb
complements, it
is
possible not
merely to
raise the
subject of
the embedded
S, but
also to
delete it. Thus,
alongside /136/
we can
have /137/:
/136/ I heard Bill singing.
hear hia
drums dram
AUX
I
ASP
VP
v
I I
beat
nak
'
102 ROOTS OF LANGUAGE
In the case of the English version of /132/, this would yield a derived structure something like /142/:
/142/ s
NP AUX VP
I I
I Past I
hear drums· beating
However, in
the case
of the
GC version
of /132/,
/141/
would represent
the superficial
as well
as the
underlying structure.
If we have ana1yzed these sentences correctly, then it should be
possible to extract from the circled node in /142/, since such a move does not violate the PIC, but impossible to extract from the circled node in /141/, which would constitute such a violation since the lower S dominates a finite clause. Extraction from /142/ is fine:
/143/ It was drums that I heard beating.
/144/ What did I hear beating?
/145/ The drums that I heard beating never stopped.
Extraction from
the circled
node of
/ 141/,
however, yields
only sen-.
tences which
are ungrammatical
in GC:
/146/ *a dram mi hia a nak
/147/ *a wa mi hia a nak?
/148/ *di drom-dem we mi hia a nak neva stap
Since there is no other possible reason for the ungrammaticality of these sentences, we can only conclude that they are ungrammatical because they violate the PIC, and that +herefore the embedded sentence in /132/ is a finite one.
CREOLE 103
Very few
writers on
creoles have
discussed perception-verb
com plements
specifically, and
fewer still
have even
attempted to
ana!yze them. Thus,
the most
that can
be done
at present
is to
point to
a wide range
of superficially
similar structures
and hope
that scholars
in the various
regions will
determine whether
they show
the same
constraints on subject
deletion and
extraction as
did the
GC examples,
Similar structures are
found in
other English
creoles, such
as
Belize Creole
(BC); in
French creoles,
such as
HC and
Guyanais (GU);
and in
Portu guese creoles
like
ST:
/149/ BC: ionli si di tar a flo:t ina di bailing wata
'He only saw the tar floating (lit., tar was floating) in the boiling water'
/150/ GU: mo we Iika briga
Isee he ASP fight
'Isaw him fighting (lit., he was fighting)'
/151/ HC: Iiwe tet Boukinet ap-gade Ii
he see head Bouquinette ASP-watch him
'He saw Bouquinette's head watching him (lit., head was watching)'
/152/ ST: e be i-ska landa
he see I-ASP swim
'He saw
me swimming
(lit., I
was swimming)'
Before leaving
perception-verb
complements, we
should note
that there are
also some
similar constructions
which are
nonfmite in
English but clearly
finite in
at least
one English
creole, GC;
for example,
causative imperatives:
/153/ mek igowe
'Make him leave'
/154/ *mek am gowe
/155/ na mek ina wok
'Don't prevent him from working'
104 ROOTS OF LANGUAGE
/156/ *na mek am na wok
Note the impossibility of clefting such sentences in GC:
{157j I prevented him from working.
/158/ It was him that Iprevented from working.
/159/ mi mek ina wok
/160/
*a imi
mek na
wok
Example /160/ is so bad that it is almost unpronounceable. However, the restriction does not apply to clefting per se since the subject NP may undergo the process:
/161/ a mi mek i na wok
'It was Iwho prevented him from working'
The fact
that complements
of perception
and causation
verbs appear
to constitute
finite sentences
in creoles suggests
the possibility that
there might
be no
such thing
as a
nonfinite structure
in these
languages. In
fact,
Idoubt
whether there
is any creole
extant for
which such an
extreme statement
would be
true. However,
there is
a good deal
of evidence
which suggests
that at
their earliest
stage of
develop ment
creoles may
not have
had any
nonfinite strnctures.
It should
have become
apparent by
now that
we are
not going
to get very
far with
the study
of creoles-or
of child
language acquisition,
or of
language origins-if
we allow
ourselves to
remain trapped
within the
static, antiprocessual
framework which
has dominated
linguistics since de
Saussure. The
emergence of
creole languages
is a
process; language
acquisition is
a process;
the original
growth and
development of human
language was
assuredly a
process. To
apply to
processes those
methods expressly
designed to
handle static-synchronic
systems is simply
absurd; in
order to
do this,
you have
to pretend
that a
process
'
CREOLE 105
is a state, and ignore exactly those characteristics that render it distinc tive. Such a procedure is sometimes defended as an "idealization," cf. Chomsky and Halle (1968:Chapter 8), but the difference between "idealization" and "convenient fiction" seems not to be grasped by these authors. In fact, static generativism, the only kind we have had so far (although there is no a priori reason why there should not be a dynamic generativism), has ignored creoles, ignored language origins, and in the case of language acquisition-something it could hardly ignore since the mystery of language acquisition was what it was originally set up to explain-it has intervened with the sole result of turning off 90 percent of the workers in the field, as we shall see in the next chapter.
If we are going to call a spade a spade and a process a process, we need to make some basic assumptions. One is that previous changes in any language inevitably leave their footprints behind them (Givan 1971). Another is that diachronic changes must be directly reflected in synchronic variation (Weinreich, Labov and Herzog 1968; Bailey 1973; Bickerton 1975). Equipped with these, we shall examine other types of complementation in creoles to determine whether the current state of affairs in perception-verb and causative constructions may at one time have been that of all complement types.
First let us look at a set of sentences which might appear to contain complementizers. In GC, there are three forms that migh t be taken for complementizers: se, go, and ful fi. We have already glanced at the second two in connection with the realized/nonrealized com plement distinction. The first, se, introduces complements of verbs of reporting and "psychological" verbs:
/162/ itaak se ina si am
'He said that he didn't see it'
/163/ i tel mi se ina si am
'He told me that he didn't see it'
/164/ mi no se ina si am
'I know that he didn't see it'
106 ROOTS OF LANGUAGE
Clearly, the complements that se introduces are finite Ss, just as are those introduced by Eng. that. However, it does not follow from this that se is a complementizer.
Doubt arises in the first place because se, unlike complementizers in general, is nondeletable. A sentence like mi hia se i a kom means
/170/ a dis mi no
'It's this that Iknow'
/171/ dis a wa mi no
'This is what I know'
/172/ mi no se dem gaan
CREOLE 107
'I heard (that) he was coming'; mi hia i a kom, however, cannot be synonymous with this, but can only mean 'I heard him earning'. In other cases, such as mi taak se i a k om 'I said that he was coming', deletion yields only ungrammatical sentences: *mi taak i a k om.
Further, there is the fact that se-clauses cannot be generated in subject position. In English, that-clause s can be generated in subject position and then undergo optional rightward movement by a rule of extraposition ; thus, /165/ would be assumed to be closer to its underlying structure than /166/, derived from the same underlying structure via extraposition:
/165/ That John has left isn't true.
/166/ It isn't true that John has left.
However, a similar generalization could not be true for GC since while there is grammatical equivalent for /166/, there is no grammatical equivalent for /165/:
i i67I se jan gaan ua Ll'U
il68/ na tru se jan gaau
Not only can se-clauses not be generated in subject position, they cannot be moved to sentence-initial position by any rule. There is no creole passive that would turn Everybody knows that he won into
'I know that they've left'
/17 3/ *a se dem gaan mi no
/174/ *se dem gaan a wa mi no
True, .neither clefting nor pseudoclefting works in English either, unless there 1s a head noun:
/175/ *It's that they've left that worries Bill.
/176/ It's the fact that they've l eft that worries Bill. But English can front via topicalization:
/177/ I knew already that they'd left.
/178/ That they'd left I knew already.
/179/ mi no aredi se dem gaan
/180/ *se rtem g;i,an mi no aredi
. Now, it is true that this datum, taken in isolation, says nothing irectly.about the status of se. It merely suggests that se-clauses cannot dommated by an NP node since if they were, they would presum
bly e eligibl for movement rules that affect NPs and would also
That he won is known by everyone. Clefting and pseudoclefting will
front simple
NP objects
of verbs like
no
'know'
but not
se-clause
J
· 1onst1tute possible expansions of subiect NPs •
If we assumed that se-
objects:
/169/ mi no dis
'I know this'
:ues were generated undr an node which in turn was immediately
mmated by VP (or So , 1f VP 1s·not a constituent in GC grammar) 11 the above data would follow. '
However, there are some facts that suggest the possibility of
108 ROOTS OF LANGUAGE
an alternative analysis. In English, there are pairs of sentences such as:
/ 181/ I'm glad that they've left.
/182/ That they've left makes me glad.
These sentences are perhaps slightly less than synonymous, and they certainly would not be regarded as transformationally related; since we have already established that se-clauses cannot be base-generated in subject position, it will come as no surprise that the GC equiva lent of /181/ is grammatical, while the GC equivalent of /182/ is ungrammatical:
/183/ mi glad se dem gaan
/184/ *se dem gaan mek ml glad Yet /185/ is grammatical:
/185/ dem gaan mek mi glad
lit., 'They've left CAUSE I glad'
Example /185/
cannot be
derived from
/184/
by se-deletion
since, as
we saw,
se
does
not delete.
It could
only be
derived by
embedding S under
the
subject
NP node.
Again, these
facts, taken
in
isolation, might
not .seem
to con
stitute
evidence against
the status
of se
as a
complementizer. Since
we have
already suggested
that se-clauses
could be
introduced under
Snot
dominated by
NP, all
we need
in order
to accommodate
/185/
is a
rule that
will
expand NP
as S,
but not
as S.
However, the
picture would
change somewhat
if we
could show
one or
both of
two things:
That GC required a rule NP -+ S.
2) That se-clauses could not be generated under S.
ln order to examine these possibilit \es, let us look at another quasi-
CREOLE 109
complementizer, fi!fu
(henceforth
referred to
as fi,
for the
sake
of convenience, since
fi
is the
more basilectal,
if nowadays
rarer, form
).
ln the
GC lexicon,
fi
must be
entered both
as a
preposition and as
a
modal auxiliary
of obligation:
/186/ mi du am fi rneri, na fi ayu
'I did it for Mary, not for you (pl.)'
/187/ mi fl go tumara
'I ought to go tomorrow'
However, there are also sentences such as:
/188/ mi waan fi go
'!want to go'
/189/ mi
waan ifi
go
'I want him to go'
In /188/, fi looks like a complementizer, more or less the equivalent of ng. to. The likelihood that, unlike se, fi is a genuine cornplernentizer
is rncreased by the fact that fi in /188/ will delete without change of meanmg:
/190/ mi waan go
'I want to go'
. Unfortuntely, /189/ see'."s at first sight to suggest a quite d1ffeent analysis. Complementizers normally precede the sentences they mtroduce, but /191/ is ungrammatical:
/191/ *mi waan fi igo
Complernentizers may. follw _subjects of embedded sentences if raising (or whatver you bd1eve m 1f you don't believe in raising) has taken place, as m I want him to go; however, as with perception-verb comple-
llO ROOTS
OF
LANGUAGE
ments, a
morpheme-for-morpheme translation
of
such sentences
is ungrammatical:
/192/ *mi waan am figo
However, ft in its /189/ location is nondeletable:
/193/ *mi waan i go
CREOLE 111
constituents are extracted from Ji-clauses. Let us look first of all at
a sentence such as:
/196/ Where did he want to go? This has the GC equivalent:
/197/ wisaid iwaan fi go?
This contrasts with the status of ft in /188/, and suggests that while
fi in /188/ is a complementizer, fi in 1189/ is a modal auxiliary.
There would seem to be two possible analyses of /188/ and
We should note also equivalents:
that
sentences
l"ke
/ 198/ have exact English
/189/. In the first, ft is really a modal auxiliary in both cases-in /189/
for the reasons already given, and in /188/ because /188/ is simply derived from /194/ by equi-deletion (obligatory since /194/ is un grammatical without it) :
/194/ *mi waan mi fi go
This first solution would be tempting but for /190/ : modal auxiliaries do not normally delete without loss of meaning. We might then wish to choose the second analysis, which would derive 1189/ from 1195/ via obligatory complementizer deletion since without such deletion /195/ is simply ungrammatical:
/195/ *mi waan fi i fi go
/198/ wisaid i waan mi fi go?
'Where did he want me to go?'
In all three sentences /196/-/198/, a constituent, WH-piace, is moved out of an embedded S-in the case of /198/ presumably a tensed S.
. If fi in /198/ is a modal verb, and no complementizer or preposic
:ion. has been deleted, /198/ must have an underlying structure (ignore
mg irrelevant detail) something like /199/:
/199/
s
COMP S
However, there still lurks in the background the possibility that, despite
1190/
and
/195/,
the
prepositional
role
of
ft
might
somehow
be
in
volved (cf. the claim by Koopman and Lefebvre [1981] that HC pu,
a close relative of Ji "can introduce final complements, either infinitival
. . . or tensed").
To choose out of these three possibilities-complementizer, modal verb, preposition-we need to examine sentences in which
'
NP v
I
I
i waan
s
NP Aux v
I I
I
mi fi go
NP
WH-place
112 ROOTS OF LANGUAGE
WH-movement would then move WH-place under the COMP node.
However, such movement would violate the PIC, since it moves WH out of a tensed S. Similarly, if a deleted prepositional fi introduced
/201/
s
CREOLE 113
mi
fi
go
in
/
198/,
the
latter
sentence
would
have
an
underiying
struc
ture
something
like
/200/:
/200/
s
CO!vlP S
NP V PP
I l
COMP S
I
( ) NP V S
\ I I
\ i waan CO!v!P S
', I
"
, (fi) NP Aux V NP
-
-
-
-
-
-
-", I I I
I
', mi fi go WH-place
' _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ....
waan
p
I
fi
NP Aux
I
mi fi
V NP
/">.
go WH-place
Complementizer deletion, optional in /188/, is, as we have seen, obliga tory in /189/ and /198/. However, once fi is deleted, we have an empty COMP node (the one dominating the fi in parentheses in /201/).
Chomsky (1977) has argued that WH-movement, being a cyclic rule, can move constituents from CO!v!P to CO!v!P, thus forming a ''bridge" over the barrier of the PIC. In /201/-but not in /199/ or /200/ there is a lower COMP node to which WH can be moved on the first cycle, allowing the second cycle to move it to the higher COMP node,
as indicated by the dotted line in /201/. Thus, in contrast with /199/ and /200/, WH-movement in /201/ does not violate the PIC.
Example / 200/ would involve a rule which would expand PP as either p NP or P S; just such a rule is proposed for HC by Koopman and Lefebvre (1981), on rather similar evidence, involving prepositional p and its tensed complements. However, movement of the WH-constl· tuent from the right-hand NP node to COMP would again involve
violation of the PIC.
If, on the other hand, fi is a complementizer, no violation need
ensue. In this case, the underlying structure of /198/ would be some thing like /201/:
\
If the foregoing analysis is correct, GC does contain an S struc
ture in some complements. However, there was no motivation in /201/ for assuming S to be dominated by NP, so we have yet to prove condi tion (1) (p. 108).
In order to prove condition ( 1), we need another set of fi·
sentences.. Unlike perception-verb complements, which cannot have zero subjects (mi hia dem a sing versus *mi hia a sing ), Ji-clause comple ments can:
/202/
yu
g-afi
kraas
di
riba
fi
miit
tong
'You
have
to
cross
the
river
in
order
to
get
to
town'
114 ROOTS OF
LANGUAGE
CREOLE 115
/203/ na bin iizi fl kech taiga
'It wasn't easy to catch a jaguar'
In both cases, the Ji-clause can be moved:
/204/ fi miit tong yu gafi kraas di riba
'To get to town you have to cross the river'
/205/ fi kech taiga na bin iizi
'To ctch a jaguar wasn't easy'
However, since both Woolford (1979) and Koopman and Lefebvre (1981) give arguments that Tok Pisin and Haitian Creole, respectively, have homophonous pairs of complementizers and prepositions (TP
long, HC pu ), we cannot automatically assume that fi is a comple
mentizer in / 202/-/205/ just because it was in /198/. To show this,
/207/
c I
fi
NP
I
s
NP
I
(/>
s
v
I
kech
s
Aux
A
na bin
NP
I
taiga
vadj
I
iizi
we have
to question
the NP
in
/203/:
/206/ a wa na bin iizi ft kech ?
'What was it that wasn't easy to catch?'
If fi were a preposition in /203/, /203/ and /206/ would have the under lying struJ:;ture of /200/; but we saw in our analysis of /200/ that if WR-movement were applied to that structure, a violation of the PIC
would result. To avoid such violation, fi would have to be a comple
mentizer, and /203/ and /206/ would have to have the underlying structure of /201/. Since /206/ is grammatical, fi must be a comple
mentizer.
If this is the case, /205/ must contain an S directly dominated by NP, as in /207 /:
\
Thus, the exclusion of se-dauses from subject position, which we noted in discussing /184/ above, cannot be due to the absence of a rule rewriting NP as S (COMP S). The ungrammaticality of /184/ must, therefore, result from the fact that se is not a complementizer, and consequently cannot be inserted in structures such as /207 /.
We can now turn to condition (2) (p. 108). The fact that se
cannot be a complementizer, suggested by the foregoing analysis,
;vod of course also make it impossible for se-dauses to be generated m S complements. But let us assume for the moment that se is a com plementizer. If this were so, .a sentence such as /208/ below would have a structure similar to that of /201/:
/208/ dem taak se ide a tong
'They said that he was in tovm'
In other words, the complement Swould contain a COMP node which ':od permit CO.MP-to-COMP WR-movement and hence permit ques t1onmg of the nghtmost NP, We would then have to predict that
/209/ would be grammatical:
116 ROOTS OF LANGUAGE
/209 I *wisaid dem taak se i de? 'Where did they say he was?'
Unfortunately, it is not. We can therefore only conclude that se is something other than a complementizer.
The third quasi-complementizer, go, is even more restricted than
se. Like se, but unlike fi, it cannot be preposed:
/210/ i tek i gon fi shuut taiga
'He took his gun to shoot a jaguar (but did not necessarily do so)'
/211/ i tek i gon go shuut taiga
'He took his gun to shoot a jaguar (and did shoot one)'
/212/ fi shuut taiga i a tek i gon
'For shooting jaguars he used to take his gun'18
/213/ *go shuut taiga i a tek i gon
Unlike both fi and se, go cannot occur with adjectival verbs:
/214/ mi glad fi sii yu
'I'm glad to see you'
/215/ mi glad se yu kom 'I'm glad you came'
/216/ *mi glad go sii yu
As with se (but not fi ), complement constituents cannot be extracted:
/217I i gaan a tong go sii dakta
'He's gone to town to see the doctor'
/218/ *a hu i gaan a tong go sii?
'Who did he go to town to see?'
/219/ *di dakta we i gaan a tong go sii de bad an aal 'The doctor he went to town to see is sick too'
We can assume, as with se, that extraction is blocked because COMP-to
'
CREOLE 117
COMP movement is impossible; therefore, go is not a complementizer either.
The claim that se is a serial verb in Krio has been argued strongly
by Larimore (1976), but since there are some minor differences be tween the grammars of Krio and GC, not all her arguments apply to the latter language. I shall assume without further argument that se and go are both serial verbs. If this assumption is correct, then se and go, if not fi, really belong with the verbs that we will discuss in the next section on serialization. But because fi may be a comple mentizer synchronically, it by no means necessarily follows that fi always was a complementizer.
Washabaugh (1979:Example 9) cites the following sentence: 19
/220/ ah waan di rien kom fi ah don go huoam
'I want the rain to come so that I won't have to go home'
This sentence, from Providence Island Creole (PIC), a variety similar in many ways to GC, is of a type claimed by Washabaugh to be "rare in most contemporary varieties of [Caribbean English creoles] , but . . . frequent enough in older texts." Washabaugh does not analyze this sentence, so we do not know whether the following sentence would be rejected by Providence Islanders:
/221/ ?wisaid ah waan di rien kom fi ah don go?
It would almost certainly be rejected by speakers of other Caribbean English creoles.
The most likely structure of /2 20/ would be one similar to that
of /185/, reproduced here for convenience: dem gaan mek mi glad
That structure
is illustrated
in /222/:
118 ROOTS OF LANGUAGE
CREOLE 119
/ 222/
NP
sI
NP V
s
v
I
mek
NP
I
s
NP V
/224/ Benefactives:
GU: Iipote sa bay mo
he bring that give me
'He brought that for me'
/225/ Datives:
ST: e fa da ine
he talk give them 'He talked to them'
dJm gaL
li gld
/226/ Instrumentals:
Djuka (DJ) : a teke nefi koti a meti
he take knife cut the meat
Here, mek functions rather like the abstract verb CAUSE once posited by generative semanticists. In /220/, fi would have a meaning something
like SHOULD CAUSE, with di rien kom as its subject and ah don go huoam as its object.
On present evidence we cannot determine for sure whether fi
was once exclusively a serial verb. However, it seems reasonable to suppose that in GC and other creoles, serial verbs may be turning into complementizers. Such a process certainly exists in some West African languages (Lord 1976), and we shall shortly examine evidence from Sranan which indicates that serial verbs there may be undergoing a rather similar kind of reanalysis.
The boundaries
of serial
verb constructions
are not
easy to define,
nor is
it easy
(or perhaps
even desirable)
to distinguish
them from other
superficially similar
constructions
such as
"verb
chains" (Forman
1972).
Here, I
shall simply
concern myself
with those
serial constructions
which are
equivalent to
multi-case sentences,
i.e., which
mark oblique
cases (dative,
instrumental, etc.)
with verbs
rather than
with prepositions
or with other
types of
formal devices.
Examples of
such structures
would include:
/223/ Directionals:
SR: a wakago a wosu
he walk go to house
'He walked home' \
'He cut the meat with a knife'
Sentences such as /223/-/226/ are by no means always the only ways in which those creoles that have them can express case relations. Alongside /226/, Djuka has /227 /:
/227 / a koti a meti anga nefi
he cut the meat with knife
'He cut the meat with a knife'
According to Huttar (1975), sentences like /227/ occur more fre quently in speech than sentences like /226/.
Which of such pairs represents the most conservative creole
level? Serial verbs fonn a more marked means of expressing case rela tions than do prepositions. It is, therefore, relatively unlikely that a language which already had prepositions to mark case would develop serial verbs (except in certain circumstances which could harclly apply
to creoles and which will be discussed later). On the other hand, it is
relatively likely that a language which originally had only serial verbs as a case-marking device would subsequently develop prepositions, either by a type of reanalysis already attested for West African lan guages (Lord 1976), or by direct borrowing from a high-prestige lan guage with which it was in contact (probably the case in any creole
120 ROOTS OF LANGUAGE
that has undergone even a relatively small amount of decreolization). We are therefore justified in assuming that serial verb constructions represent extremely conservative varieties of those creoles in which they are found.
Serial verbs are usually interpreted as the result of African substratum influence on creoles, but creolists seldom if ever ask how those West African languages which. have serial verbs (by no means all of them ) happen to have come by them. Despite lip service to linguistic equality, a dual standard is still applied to creoles: if a creole has a feature, it must have borrowed it ; but if a noncreole language has the same feature, it is assumed to be an independent innovation at least in the absence of clear evidence to the contrary. In fact, I would claim that creoles and West African languages invented verb serialization independently , but for slightly different reasons.
Wherever serial verbs are found outside creoles, a change in word order is always involved (see Li and Thompson [1974] for Chinese; Giv6n [1974] and Hyman [1974] for West African languages; Brad shaw [1979] for Austronesian languages in New Guinea). Sometimes the change may be contact-influenced, as in New Guinea; sometimes it may come from purely language-internal developments, as with the . Kwa languages of West Africa. Precise explanations of why SOV-SVO (West Africa) or SVO-SOV (New Guinea) changes involve serialization are still controversial. Giv6n ( 1974) suggests that serialization results from the decay of post positional case marking, an explanation chal lenged by Hyman (1974); Bradshaw (1979) suggests serialization eases parsing problems in a period of transition by generating sentences that can be parsed as either SVO or SOV without any semantic confu sion (we shall return to this point at the end of Chapter 4 ). However, there seems to be no serious ground for doubting that serialization and word-order change are involved with one another in some kind of way.
Word-order change
cannot have been
a factor
in creolization
since most
of the
languages in
contact, as
well as
the resultant creoles,
have been
SVO. However,
the problem
that word-order
change creates
'
CREOLE 121
that of unambiguously identifying case roles while the change is under way-must have been a problem in creolization too, if we assume what must almost certainly have been the case in at least some pidgins, i.e., that the latter did not contain (or at least did not contain a full range of) prepositions. Without prepositions and without inflectional morphology, how else could oblique cases be distinguished if not by serial verbs?
More specific doubts about the viability of substrata! accounts, as well as the seeds of an explanation as to why creoles differ so much in the extent to which they exhibit serialization, are suggested by the following data on the Surinam creoles (Djuka, Sranan, Saramaccan). In these languages, instrumental constructions (as expressed via equiva lents of 'He cut the meat with a knife') have the following range:
/228/ DJ: a koti a meti anga nefi
/229/ SR: a koti a meti nanga nefi
/230/ SA: a koti di gbamba ku faka
/231/ DJ: a teke nefi koti a meti
/232/ SR: a teki nefi koti a meti
/233/ SA: ?a tei faka koti di gbamba
A sentence similar to / 233/ -a tei di pau naki en, lit., 'He took the stick hit it', i.e., 'He hit it with the stick'-is cited in Grimes and Glock (1970) but footnoted to the effect that the authors have since become highly doubtful as to its status in SA. In Glock (1972), which deals explicitly with case phenomena, there is no mention of sentences like
/233/, although sentences like /230/, as well as serialization of other cases, are cited and discussed; nor is SA credited with tei-serialization in Jansen, Koopman and Muysken (1978), although, again, there is no explicit discussion. It is thus impossible to tell whether Saramaccan has this kind of serialization, although the present balance of evidence seems to be against it.
Saramaccan is well known as being, among the three Surinam creoles (or, for that matter, among all the Caribbean creoles), the one which best preserves African lexical and phonological characteristics
122 ROOTS OF LANGUAGE
(note, in
the preceding
examples,gbamba
'meat',
a word
of presumably
African origin
which preserves
the coarticulated
and prenasalized
stops characteristic of
many West
African languages
but of
no other
creoles, compared with
DJ and SR
meti
from
Eng. meat).
This
be.ing
so, and
if serial
constructions also
reflect African
influence, one
would expect
to find that
SA had more
of such
constructions than
DJ
and SR,
rather than
the reverse.
But while there is no explanation for the pattern in terms of substrate influence, an explanation can be provided in terms of inter· action between the antecedent pidgin and its superstrate. It seems reasonable to assume that if a creole can acquire prepositions from its antecedent pidgin (as HCE did), it will not need to develop serial verbs for case marking. The only question is, why should some antecedent pidgins acquire prepositions while others do not?
Clearly, one factor is population balance, while another factor is the type of social structure; between them, these will determine the accessibility of the superstrate language and hence help to deter mine how many superstrate items the pidgin will absorb. However, these are by no means the only factors involved. Other things, including social conditions, being equal, structural differences between super strate features may determine whether a pidgin will or will not absorb these features.
For a superstrate feature to be accessible to a pidgin, that feature must be more or less unambiguous with respect to meaning, more or less free from mutation with respect to phonological structure, and as close as possible to the canonical form of CV(CV). The superstrate prepositions of instrumentality available to the three languages were: for SR and DJ, Eng. with; for SA, Eng. with and Pg. com-phonetically, [ko] or [kUJ in many contemporary dialects. The former, with its initial semivowel (a marked segment) and fmal labiodental fricative (an extremely marked segment), is remote from the canonical pattern; the latter, in the form in which it is perhaps most frequently realized, fits it exactly. The relative difficulty of acquiring com and with may best be pictured if the reader imagines that his linguistic competence
\
CREOLE 123
is limited
to African
languages and
then attempts
to segment
the following synonymous
utterances:
/234/ vai corn aquele homem
/235/ go with that man
Word boundaries in the Portuguese utterance are fairly un ambiguously marked; in the English one, it would be hard to determine where the verb ended and the preposition began, or where the preposi tion ended and the demonstrative began-or even to be sure that there was a preposition there at all. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that neither Sranan nor J:1uka could absorb with, but had to adopt a serializ ing device in order to express instrumentality, and that only later did they develop their own preposition, (n)anga, of uncertain origin;
whereas, on the other hand, Sararnaccan, like all Portuguese creoles, easily acquired ku and thus did not need a serial construction for instrumentality.
The underlying structure of serial-verb constructions has been a subject of some controversy (see Williams [ l971, 197 5] , Roberts [1975], Voorhoeve [1975], Jansen, Koopman and Muysken [1978] for some differing views on this subject). I suspect that varying analyses are due at least in part to inherent conflicts in the data, and that these conflicts, in turn, are due to ongoing developments in creoles which have the result of complicating the original creole syntax and intro ducing categories which formed no part of the original grammar. If we are to understand what creoles are, and make comparisons between particular creoles without allowing ourselves to be misled by sub sequent and irrelevant accretions, we must-to cite the words of Koop man and Lefebvre, on which I could not hope to improve-"restrict the notion of syntactic expansion to changes leading to the acquisition of features that are part of core grammar up to the time of creolization and to consider the emergence of other features as regular cases of syntactic change" (Koopman and Lefebvre 1981:218).
Koopman and Lefebvre assume, as I do, that pidgins begin with
124 ROOTS OF LANGUAGE
nouns, verbs, and very little else. They assume that VP is a pidgin category, but do not defend it as such. For reasons given in the dis cussion of GC movement rules above, I do not think VP is a category in most early creoles, although of course creoles may acquire it later, either through decreolization or regular syntactic change (reanalysis). The only rule creoles would then require to generate any of the comple ment types, serial or other, discussed so far (with the exception of
/i-clauses) would be /236/:
/236/ S -+ NP Aux V (NP) (S)
If in fact VPs were developed initially, two rules would be required:
/237 I S -+ NP Aux VP
/238/ VP -+ V (NP) (S)
CREOLE 125
/243/ (*)
na a
brede Kofi
teki a
nefi koti
'It was the bread that Kofi cut with the knife'
/244 I na teki Kofi teki a nefi koti a brede
'With the knife, that's how Kofi cut the bread'
/245/ (*) na koti Kofi teki a nefi koti a brede
'Cut it, that's what Kofi did to the bread with the knife'
In /241/ and /243/, some speakers can extract the most deeply embed ded NP, while others cannot. In /244/, a rule similar to the GC verb focusing rule copies the higher of the two verbs, for all speakers; but in /245/, while some speakers can copy the more deeply embedded verb, others cannot.
These facts can be accounted for if we assume that the two sets of speakers have different types of underlying structures for these sentences, as represented in /246/ and /247/, respectively:
Not a great deal depends on which analysis is correct ; therefore, since crucial evidence will be taken from Sranan, and since Sranan scholars generally assume a VP (although, once again, without explicit discussion), I shall accept /237 I and /238/ as specifying the earliest and most basic level of creole syntax, while continuing to suspect that
/236/ may be a more accurate representation of it.
The evidence consists of judgments by native speakers of Sranan cited in Jansen, Koopman and Muysken (1978). The parenthesized asterisks before certain sentences indicate that while some speakers found them grammatical, others did not.
/239/ Kofi teki a nefi koti a brede
'Kofi cut the bread with the knife'
/240/ san Kofi teki koti a brede?
'What did Kofi cut the bread with ?'
/241/ (*) san Kofi teki a nefi koti?
'What" did Kofi cut with the knife?'
/242/ na a nefi Kofi teki koti a brede ,
'It was
the knife
that Kofi
cut the
bread with'
/246/
s
NP VP
I
Kofi V NP S
teki a nefi NP VP
(Kofi) V NP
I I
koti a brede
126 ROOTS OF LANGUAGE
CREOLE 127
/247/
----s-----
would yield /246/ as the underlying structure for /239/. Ishall show in a moment that even if speakers did not have underlyi,ng structures like /247 / for serial teki sentences, they would require them for other
KN1Pi
VP
V .-NlP VP
types of serial-verb constructions. In any case, I know of no evidence that would point to differences in rule ordering among Sranan speakers;
in
teL a1£i p
indeed, it is very hard,
creole grammars, to find any clear cases in
I
I
koti a brede
Speakers who rejected / 241/, /243/, and / 245/ would have
/246/ as
an underlying
structure. Here,
both the
Specified Subject
Condition (SSC:
Chomsky 1973)
and the
PIC would
block movement out
of sites
dominated by
the lower
S. Speakers
who accepted
these three sentences
would have
/247 I
as an
underlying
structure. Since
/247/ contains no tensed S, specified subject , or bounding nodes that would block extraction, all constituents could be moved without violating the SSC or the PIC. The first set of speakers would have rules
/237/ and /238/; the second set would replace / 238/ with /248/:
/248/ VP _,. V (NP) (VP)
Greg Lee (p.c.) has pointed out that there is an alternative solution which does not involve positing two different underlying structures: the two sets of speakers could have different rule orderings for extraction and Equi. If the f1rst set ordered extraction before Equi, the lower occurrence of Kofi would still be undeleted when extraction applied, the S-node would remain unpruned, and the SSC and PIC would still apply. If the second set ordered Equi before ex traction, the offending S-node would be pruned to give /247 / as a derived structure, and no constraints would then inhibit movement.
This is true, but it means that both sets of speakers would then
have the more primitive phrase-structure rules-/237/ and /238/-that
\
which rule ordering is crucial.
A second set of native-speaker judgrnents concerns Sranan directional constructions, for example /223/, repeated here for conveni ence as /249/:
/249/ a waka go a wosu
he walk go to house 'He walked home'
Here, in contrast with the previous examples, there are no disagree ments; either verb can be fronted by the same verb-focusing rule that led to disputes over the status of /245/;
/250/ na waka a waka go a wosu
'He walked to the house (rather than ran to it)'
/251/ na go a waka go a wosu
'He walked to the house (rather than away from it)'
Thus there
is no
possibility that
speakers could
assign to
/2491 a
struc tural
description like
that of
/246/, where
the existence
of a
tensed S would
prohibit extraction
of the
lower verb;
rather, /249/
must have
a structure similar
to /247
/, as
illustrated in
/252/ on
the following
page:
128 ROOTS OF LANGUAGE
/252/ ----s ----
/259/ VP _.. V (NP) (PP)
CREOLE 129
For those who find the two sentences grammatical,
gi must be a verb,
NP VP
l V P
I
waka V PP
I /">,.
go a WOSU
Finally , Sranan speakers disagree again over sentences involving datives and benefactives expressed with gi, which has an independent existence as a main verb with the meaning 'give'. Differences may be illustrated by the following sentences:
and such speakers must have rule /248/. The verb-focusing rule that applies in /258/ cannot front prepositions, so, again, those who find
/258/ ungrammatical must consider gi as a preposition, while those who find it grammatical must consider gi a verb. Differences of this kind are only comprehensible if the set of speakers who find all three sentences grammatical assigns to /253/ and /256/ a structure similar to
/252/, with
VP expanded
as in /260/
below; while
the set
of speakers who
find all
three sentences
ungrammatical (and
therefore
regard gi
as a
preposition)
analyzes the
same VP
as in
/261/ below:
/260/
VP
/253/ Meri tek watra gi den plantjes
Mary take water give the plants
'Mary brought water for the plants'
/254/ gi san Meri tek watra?
'What did Mary bring water for?'
/255/
(*)
san
Meri
teki
watra
gi?
'What did Mary bring water for?'
/256/ Meri teki a buku gi mi
'Mary gave me the book'
/257 / (*) na mi Meri teki a buku gi
'It was me Mary gave the book to'
/258/ (*) na gi Meri teki a buku gi mi
'Mary
gave
the
book
to
me'
Sranan does not strand prepositions, For those who find /255/ and /257/ nngrammatical, gi must be a preposition, and they must have, instead of /248/, the rule /259/:
'
/261/
V NP VP
I I /'-..
teki watra V NP
buku I I
gi plantjes
mi
VP
V NP PP
I I /'-..
teki watra P NP
I I
buku
gi plantjes . mi
130 ROOTS OF LAJ-!GUAGE
In other words, there are three distinct ways in which Sranan speakers analyze serial-verb constructions:
/262/ VP _,. . . . . (S)
(some speakers for teki instrumentals)
VP _,. . . , , (VP)
(some speakers for teki instrumentals; all speakers for go
directionals; some speakers for gi dative/benefactives)
VP -+ . . .. (PP)
(some speakers for gi dative/benefactives)
If the
first of
these stages
represents the
most primitive
level of
creole development, as
we have
given reason
to believe,
then the
data shown here,
drawn from
a synchronic
analysis
of Sranan
verb serialization,
represent at
the same
time the diachronic
development
of
Sranan, from an
original state
in
which presumably
all serial
verbs were
full verbs in
tensed sentences
to a
stage in
which these
verbs are
beginning to be
reduced to
mere prepositions.
Note that
this process
serves to bring
Sranan structurally
closer to
the high-prestige
language, Dutch,
with which
it
has been
in
continuous contact
for over
three centuries.
Thus, there is good reason for claiming, across creole languages generally, that the vast majority of embedded sentences are finite and tensed, and that where exceptions to this generalization can be found, they constitute developments that have taken place subsequent to creolization. The second half of this claim would be hard to prove con vincingly because of the inaccessibility of evidence; but I know of neither facts nor arguments that would point in an opposite direction.
With regard to
the types
of complementation
featuring serial
verbs, it
would seem
that the
strongest constraint
on such
develop ments was
the availability
of superstrate
prepositions for
case-marking purposes.
Where prepositions
were available,
even if
African influence
was strong
(as with
Saramaccan), they
would be
chosen over
serial models. In
the absence
of superstrate
prepositions,
serialization would
always be
chosen. I
suspect that
it \\\as
reinvented, rather
than selected,
CREOLE 131
in most if not all cases; but if not, if it was indeed selected out of a range of substrate alternatives, the present theory would remain un affected. This theory claims that verb serialization is the only answer to the problem of marking cases in languages which have only N and V as major categories. Thus, if such structures were selected from a substratum, they were selected because they offered the only answer, not merely because they happened to be present in the substratum; and, in those cases where they were not present in the substratum (as may have been the case in creoles that drew heavily on Guinean or Bantu rather than Kwa languages), readers of Chapter 1 should have little doubt as to the power of creole children to invent such structures, should the language they were developing require these.
However, before leaving serial verbs, a word is in order on HCE. Substratomaniacs will naturally wish to attribute the absence of serial verb constructions in HCE to the absence of an African substratum rather than to the presence of prepositions. In fact, though no true serial constructions have developed as a consistent part of the syn chronic grammar, sporadic residues of such constructions are to be found both in synchronic speech and in the literature, For instance, instrumental and directional uses of verbs would occur occasionally in the speech of the very oldest HCE speakers:
/263/ dei wan get naif pok yu
'They want to stab you with a knife'
/264/ dei wawk fit go skul they walk feet go school
'They went to school on foot'
Moreover, decreolization
in Hawaii
began so
early and
progressed so rapidly
that there
is good
reason to
believe that
other similar
forms were already
lost by
the early
seventies. For
instance, in
basilectal GC,
take
it
and
bring
it
are
regularly rendered as
ker
am
go (lit.,
'carry it go')
and bing
am
kom,
a fact
usually explained
by pointing
to a
similar structure in
Yoruba.
Smith (1939),
listing the
commonest "mistakes"
132 ROOTS OF LANGUAGE
made by
children in
Hawaii-most early
sources of
HCE have
this deplorable
pedagogical bias-mentions
take
om
go
and bring
om
come,
only this
time
the origin
is
given as
Chinese! (In
fact, the
majority of
children listed
as using
it are
non-Chinese.) However,
similar forms did
not occur
in any
of our
recordings (although
the children
of Smith's study
would only
have been
in their
forties when
those recordings
were made), and
they would
seem today
to have
disappeared entirely.
Yet their existence,
for however
brief a
period, can
leave little
doubt that HCE
could have
and would
have invented
regular serial-verb
construc
tions if no other means of marking case had been available.2 0
We have now surveyed a wide range of creole structures across a number of unrelated creole languages. We have seen that even taking into account the, in some cases, several centuries of time that have elapsed since creolization, and the heavy pressures undergone by those creoles (a large majority ) that are still in contact with their superstrates, these languages show similarities which go far beyond. the possibility of coincidental resemblance, and which are not explicable in terms of conventional transmission processes such as diffusion or substratum influence (the ad hoe nature of the latter should be ade quately demonstrated by the opportunism of those who attribute a structure to Yoruba when it appears in the Caribbean and to Chinese when it appears in Hawaii). Moreover, we fmd that the more we strip creoles of their more recent developments, the more we factor out superficial and accidental fearures, the greater are the similarities that reveal themselves. Indeed, it would seem reasonable to suppose that the only differences among creoles at creolization were those due to differences in the nature of the antecedent pidgin, in particular to the extent to which superstrate features had been absorbed by that pidgin and were therefore directly accessible to the first creole generation in the outputs of their pidgin-speaking parents. Finally, the overall pattern of similarity which emerges from this chapter is entirely conso nant with the process of building a language from the simplest consti tuents-in many cases, no more than S, N, and V, the minimal consti- tuents necessary for a pidgin. ,
CREOLE 133
In theory, given these basic constituents, there are perhaps not infinitely many but certainly a very large number of ways in which, one might suppose, a viable human language could be built-at least as many ways as there are different kinds of human language. This would certainly be the conclusion to which any existing school of linguistic theory would lead one. It would, however, be an incorrect conclusion. The fact that there appears to be only one way of building up a language (with some, but relatively few and minor variations, of course) strongly suggests that when this problem was originally faced., whether thirty thousand years or thirty thousand centuries ago, it might have had to be solved in a very similar way, and we shall further explore this possibility in Chapter 4.
Our original aim in this chapter was to show that the "inven tions" of HCE speakers illustrated in Chapter 1 were not peculiar to them, but followed a regular pattern of "invention" which emerged wherever human beings had to manufacture an adequate language in short order from inadequate materials. Now, if all children can indeed do this-and it would be bizarre indeed if the capacity developed only when it was needed-they can only do so as the result of the factor which is responsible for all species-specific behavior: genetic trans mission of the bioprogram for the species.
The idea that there is a bioprogram for human (and other spe cies) physical development is wholly uncontroversial. No one supposes that human beings have to learn to breathe, eat, yell when they are hurt, stand upright, or flex the muscles of finger and thumb into what is the purely human, species-specific "precision grip." We speak of children "learning to walk," and we characteristically help them in their first stumbling efforts, hut no one seriously imagines that if we neglected to do this, the child would go crawling into maturity. The term "learning" is used here in a purely metaphorical sense.
Yet the idea that there is a bioprogram for human mental de velopment still meets with massive resistance, despite the fact that Piaget and his disciples have shown how human cognitive development unrolls in a series of predetermined and invariant stages,2 1 and despite
134 ROOTS OF LANGUAGE
the
fact
that,
at
an
ever-increasing
rate
over
the
last
few
decades,
experi
ences
long
believed
to
be
due
to
some
unanalyzable
entity
called
"mind"
-if
they
were
indeed
more
than
subjective
illusions-have
been
shown
to
be
conditioned
and
in
some
cases
entirely
determined
by
electrochemical
events
in
the
brain.
The
mind-body
dualism
that
has
so
long
dominated
Western
thought
is
beginning
t
se.em
i:nore
:u'd
more
like
an
artifact
of
armchair
philosophers
operatmg
m
bhssful
ignorance
of
the
laws
of
reality;
and
yet
the
idea
that
there
is
an
innate
bio..
program
that
determines
the
form
of
human
language
is
still
vigorouly
if
often
quite
illogically
resisted,
threatening,
as
it
seems
to,
free
will,
mental
improvement,
and
the
whole
galaxy
of
human
dreams
and
desires.
1 shall retu:rn to these fears in the tmal chapter. In the next chapter J want to pursue what would appear to be an inevitable corol lary of the language biopr.ogram theory. If it is the case that the creole child's capacity to create language is due to such a bioprogram, then, as noted above, it would be absurd to suppose that this bioprograrn functions only in the rare and unnatural circumstances in which the normal cultural transmission of language breaks down. Forces that are under genetic control simply cannot be turned on and off .in this way. Therefore, if our theory is correct, it should be the case that the acquisition of language under normal circumstances should differ considerably from what has hitherto been supposed. .
Briefly,
the
theory
predicts
that
instead
of
merely
processmg
linguistic
input,
the
child
will
seek
to
actualize
the
blueprint
for
lan
guage
with
which
his
bioprograrn
provides
him.
We
should
note
from
the
outset
that
there
are
numerous
differences
between
the
present
theory
and
earlier
Chomskyan
theories
of
linguistic
innateness,
al
though
the
latter
are
often
so
vague
that
such
differences
are
not
always
clear.
One
point
that
should
be
made
is
that
in
the
present
theory,
the
child
is
not
supposed
to
"know"
the
bioprograrn
language
from
birth-whatever
that
might
mean-any
more
than
we
would
suppose
that
a
child
at
birth,
or
even
at
s
months,
"knows"
how
to
walk.
CREOLE 135
Rather,
the
bioprogram
language
would
unfold,
just
as
a
pnysical
bioprogram
unfolds;
the
language
would
grow
just
as
the
body
grows,
presenting
the
appropriate
structures
at
the
appropriate
times
and
in
the
appropriate,
pre-programmed
sequences
(I
shall
have
more
to
say
about
the
mechanisms
by
which
this
might
be
accomplished
when
we
come
to
Chapter
4).
However, the vast mass of human children are not growing up in even a partial linguistic vacuwn. There will be a ready-made language which their elders will be determined that they should learn. Thus, almost (but not quite) from the earliest stages, the evolving bioprogram will interact with the target language. Sometimes featu:res in the bio program will be very similar to features in the target language, in which case we will fmd extremely rapid, early, and apparently effortless learning. Sometimes the target language will have evolved away from the bioprogram, to a greater or lesser extent, and in these cases we will expect to fmd common or even systematic "errors" which, in orthodox learning theory, will be attributed to "incorrect hypotheses" formed by the child, but which, I shall claim, are simply the result of the child's ignoring (because he is not ready for it} the data presented by speakers of the target language and following out instead the instruc tions of his bioprogram.
dearly, then, it should be possible to examine existing studies of child language acquisition and reinterpret them in light of the theory outlined above. If that theory is correct, we expect to find. a wide variety of evidence that would arise directly from the interaction of bioprogram and target language, and hopefully, be able to account for phenomena of acquisition which have remained mysterious in all previous theories. Accordingly, the next chapter will present just such a survey of the existing literature on language acquisition.
ACQUISITION 137
Chapter 3
ACQUISITION
In recent
work, a
number of
scholars (e.g., Bruner
1979, Snow 1979)
have summarized
the development
of acquisition
studies over the
last two
decades. In
the mid-sixties,
the field,
which had
previously been
atheoretical and
somewhat underdeveloped,
came to
be domi nated
by a
type of
innatist theory.
This theory,
derived largely
from generative grammar,
and in
particular from
works such
.as
Chomsky (1962),
held that
the child
acquired language
through simple
exposure to
linguistic data,
much of
which was
"degenerate"
-i.e.,
consisted of st3n
tence
fragrnant11,
mid-111;1ntrncr
reformufo
tiom,
i:ind
moi.ny
types
oJ
performance error
which would
render natural speech
a very
unreliab mirror to
mature native-speaker
competence. Somehow the
child had to
sift the
wheat from
the chaff,
and he
could only
do this,
it wa claimed,
if he
had some kind
of inbuilt
Language Acquisition
Device (LAD). A
LAD would
contain a
set of
linguistic universals,
presumed to be
innate and
genetically transmitted.
These universals
would not1
however,
precisely specify
a particular
potential language,
as in
the; theory described
at the
end of
the last
chapter; rather,
they would
de fine somewhat
narrowly the
limits on
the forms
which human
language might take,
thereby drastically
reducing the
number of
hypotheses
that the child could make about the structure of his future native tongue and rendering it correspondingly easy for him to select the correct hypothesis.
Since it is well known that children, whatever else they may do, do not in fact instantly and unerringly make correct hypotheses about adult structures, but rather approximate to those structures by means of a fairly regular and well-defined series of stages, the innocent ob server might have expected the next step to consist of an examination of the initial (and often incorrect) "hypotheses" made by the child, to determine why it was that that particular hypothesis, rather than any other, was originally selected. Further steps might have con sisted of determining in what ways the child discovered the falsity of his original hypothesis and how he subsequently modified it (or selected an alternative) in order to approximate more closely to the linguistic models available to him.
Unfortunately, nothing of the kind was done. The founders of generative theory remained grandly aloof from the hare they had started, claiming that real-world acquisition processes were still too chaotic and ill understood to constitute a legitimate object of study and taking refuge in the "idealization of instantaneity" described in Chomsky and Halle (1968:Chapter 7). Workers in t1'e field were not simply left to their own devices; they were continually harassed by endless revisions of the theory. Doing acquisition work along Chom skyan lines became rather like playing a game which few minutes the umpires revise the rules.
Bearing this in mind-and bearing in mind too that workers in the field not only had no training in the analysis of variability and dynamic process generally but also had been given no reason even to think that such training might be necessary- it is not surprising that their results were somewhat unrevealing. In general, as shown, for example, in Brown and Hanlon (1970), Brown (1973), Bowerman ( 1973), etc., the predictions that generative theory seemed to make about acquisition were simply not borne out: young children did not
·show conclusive evidence that they knew S -+ NP VP or other basic PS
138 ROOTS OF LANGUAGE
rules; syntactic structures were not acquired in the order that was dictated by their relative complexity, and so on.
At the
same time,
and inspired
at least
in part
by the
meager results of
generative-oriented work,
many scholars
began to
question the assumptions
on which
this work
was based.
Was the
input really
degenerate? Was
learning as
rapid as
had been
claimed? Did
it take place
in the
cognitive vacuum
that at
least seemed
to be
implied, if not
actually asserted,
in most
generative writing?
Upon examination,
a number
of these
assumptions appeared
to he
partly or
even wholly
incorrect. Thus,
there came
about in
the early
seventies a
very rapid and
extreme swing
of the
pendulum, leading
to an all
but universal
consensus among
those working
directly on
acquisition which
persists, with relatively
minor variations,
up to
the present.
This consensus,
while not
ruling out
entirely the
possibility that some
kinds of
innate mechanisms
may be
involved in
acquisition,
systematically plays
down and
degrades the
role of
such mechanisms,
often regarding
them as
constituting
no more
than a
"predisposition"
to acquire
language, whatever
that might
mean (they
never do
say). The consensus
holds,
however, that
prelinguistic
communication and
extralinguistic knowledge
(acquired, nat
urally, through
experience) play
crucially important
roles in
acquisition, hut
that perhaps
the most critical
role of
all is
that of
the interaction,
paralinguistic as
well as
linguistic, which
takes place
between the
child and
the mother (or
other caregiver).
The mother,
it
is claimed,
models language
for the child,
adapting her
outputs
to his
linguistic level
at every
stage. Far
from being
degenerate, the
data she
provides are
highly preadapted,
highly contextualized,
and patiently
repeated. "Mothers
teach
their children
to speak,"
Bruner (1979)
states. When
all these
factors are
taken fully
into account,
the consensus
claims, the
need to
posit an innate
component in
language acquisition
shrinks to
near zero
or even disappears
altogether.
Unfortunately, the
whole
position of
this consensus
is based
on a
fallacy-a
fallacy that
should be
readily apparent
to all
readers of
the two
previous chapters.
That fallacy
is
perhaps most
concisely expressed
ACQUISITION 139
by Sow
(197
:367)
when she
remarks that
"Chomsky's
position regard.mg
the, unimportance
of the
linguistic input
was unproven,
since all
c.htldren,.
m
:UWition to
possessing
an innate
liuguistic ability,
also
receive
a
smplifie,
wll-formed
and
redundant
corpus"
(emphasis
added). This
1s
quite sunply
untrue. The
input that
the first
creole g.eneration
in Hawaii
received was
over-simplified rather
than simpli
fied, and
was as
far from
beiug well
formed as anyone
could imagine
;
and we can assume that in other areas where creoles formed the same state of affairs must have existed. Mother could not teach ;hese chil
d:en to speak, for the simple and inescapable reason that Mother herself di not know the language-the language didn't exist yet. But even so, without Mother, those children learned how to speak.
In adition to:his fallacy of fact, the Bruner-Snow position is base on a sunple log1cal fallacy. If we accept that in the vast majority of ci.rcumstances mothers do teach and children do learn, it by no means. follows that children learn BECAUSE mothers teach. It would be logically quite possible to argue that there is no connection whatso ever btween mothers' teaching and children's learning, any more than there is between ,children' walking and uncles' dragging them around the room by thetr fmgert1ps. If it could be shown that without well formed input from the mother the child could not learn to speak then we might indeed assume a causal connection. fn fact, we hav; sown the reverse: well-formed input from the mother cannot con
stitute eve a necessary condition for children to acquire language; for, otherwise, creoles could not exist.
. Bu our argument, though logically correct, need not be pushed t its logical extreme. I am perfectly willing to accept that if mother did not teach her child English. that child might have a much harder tune learning it-even that the child might never acquire a perfected form of the language, but might significantly distort it in the direction of ,the. kind d pattern we reviewed in the last chapter. All I want to chum is that 1f we persist in believing that the child must have input m order to learn, we shall continue to misunderstand completely the way in which he does learn a developed, natural language. Just as
140 ROOTS OF LANGUAGE
the child
does not
need mother
in order
to learn,
so he
could not
learn even with
a myriad
of mothers
if
he did
not have
the genetic
program that alone
enables him
to take
advantage of
her teaching.
In fact, the evidence we reviewed in the first two chapters of this book has simply never been taken into account in studies of child language acquisition. The vast majority of scholars in the f eld evince no awareness whatsoever of the existence, let alone the possible signi£cance, of pidgins and creoles; an honorable exception is Slobin (especially Slobin 1977). Unfort unately, the data available to Slobin at the time were by no means as ample as those given in the present volume; moreover, he makes the common mistake of supposing Tok Pisin to be paradigmatic of normal pidgin-creole development. Still, even limited access to pidgin-creole data is better for acquisitionists than none, and in consequence we shall find the work of Slobin and his associates illuminating on a number of points in the pages that
follow.
Meanwhile, in the absence of the insights provided by creoliza
tion, the
current .paradigm
has provided
us with much
information that
we lacked
before-on
the nature
of input
to the
child and
of child
caregiver interaction;
on the
acquisition of
turn-taking,
conversational routines,
and the
kind of
social appropriateness
summed
up under
ACQUISITION 141
"ac.quisition
s.trategy"
"ha made
us aware
of some
of the
ways by which
the child
may possibly
'get
into' the
linguistic system.
It has sl.iown
us the
importance of
perceptual mechanisms
for interpreting
utterances, and
how as
adult speakers
with full
lingllistic competence
we nevertheless
rely on
a
number of
short cuts
to understanding
. .
. . The
concept of
language acquisition
strategies has
told us
much except how
the child
acquires language."
Bowerman (1979)
, who
cites
this passage
with approval,
further points
out that
while such
strategies may enable
children to
understand utterances
which
still lie
outside their developing
grammars, those
strategies do
not and
indeed cannot, in
and of
themselves, assign
structural descriptions
to rhese
novel tterances. Yet
children
must achieve
this kind
of structural
knowledge
1f they are subsequently to use such utterances themselves in a produc tive and creative way-understanding something is miles awav from manipulating that something freely and voluntarily. fn other ,words, strategies belong in the realm of performance, and the problem is, how do you get from performance to competence? Small wonder that so many supporters of the current consensus seek to downgtade, ignore,
or even abolish the competence-performance distinction. But real problems cannot be defmed away.
. I propose, therefore, to review the literature on acquisition as
Hymes's concept of "commum•cati•ve competence H; on
;'acqm5• 1•t1• on
1t concerns certain core syntactic and semantic structures, in particular
strategies" based on contextualization, semantic and pragmatic clues to the function of novel structures, etc., etc.-and yet, as more and more thoughtful scholars are realizing, the gathering of this information has merely served to conceal the fact that the central question of acquisition, the question with which the early generativists did at least struggle, however unsuccessfully, is simply not being answered:
How can the child acquire syntactic and semantic patterns of great arbitrariness and complexity in such a way that they can be used creatively without making mistakes?
Cromer {1976:353), for inst:.mce, observes that the concept of
some that we have had occasion to deal with in earlier chapters, to see whether what we know of the acquisition process supports or fails to support the hypotheses adva11ced at the end of the last chapter. To the extent that these hypotheses are supported, the general theory of a human language bioprogram will tend to be confirmed. To the
·extent that
these hypotheses
fail to
be supported,
doubts will
be cast upon
the theory,
although the
reader should
perhaps be
reminded that not
even the
most thorough
refutation, in
the arena
of child language,
would make
the initial
problem which
led to
the theory
the fact that creoles are learned without experience-miraculously "'O
0
away. At
worst, such refutation
would
merely drive
us back
to a
reconsideration of that problem.
142 ROOTS OF LANGUAGE
But before commencing this review, three words of caution are in order: the first concerning the data; the second concerning the reviewer; the third concerning the theory.
From our point of view, the data suffers from two defects. First,
much of it has been presorted in ways that automatically diminish its utility. There are a variety of reasons for this, but I shall deal with oly one in detail, since it is fairly typical. A.round 1970, when acqu:si tionists were still concerned with proving (or disproving) generative predictions about acquisition, it appeared that one way of doing this would be to see whether features of a language were acquired in an order which conformed to some kind of hierarchy of grammatical complexity-simplest first, most complex later on. But In order to do this, it was necessary to determine exactly what one me;uit by "acquisition of a feature." Children are such messy creatues; mste.ad of quietly going to bed one night without a feature, and waking ;'1th it, as the Chomskyan idealization of "instantaneus acqu1S1tion" suggests they should, they stubbornly insist on alternatmg p:esence and absence of that feature in appropriate contexts, not to mention absence and presence of that feature in inappropriate contexts, for periods of weeks, months, and occasionally even years.
Not only that, but the little beasts do not .even p_roed. as
reason dictates they should, gradually and cumulatively drmmishmg inappropriate usages as they increase appropriate ones; on the contary, a graph of their appropriate productions zigzags up and down like a malaria victim's temperature chart, before finally leveling off at or near the 100 percent mark. The innocent observer might think that the
most interesting thing you could do in acquisition study would be . to figure out why this happens, but as usual, he would e disappointed. Fashion and expediency dictate that order must be imposed on dts order: to determine the order of acquisition-a "need" dictated merely by current theory-Brown (1973) established a .purely :1'bitrary ".cri terion" for acquisition, i.e., a 90 percent production rate m appropriate environments, maintained over three consecutive recording sessions. The reign of the criterion mere { reinforced what has always been
ACQUISITION 143
a trend
in acquisition
studies, and
a deplorable
one·•
to
look to
the o0-oal
rather than
the path,
to ask
"What has
the child
acquired?" rather
than
"How has he acquired it?" In consequence, masses of potentially valuable data, which would be required by any interesting acquisition theory, were simply flushed down the drain.l
In addition to deficiencies of this nature, we have to remember that all the data collected to date were collected for very different purposes than the present one. It is a general law applicable to all research that one tends to find what one is looking for, and not to fmd what one is not looking for. Hence, it would be unrealistic if we expected to find massive quantities of unambiguous evidence pointing toward the truth of our theory, which had yet somehow been missed by previous observers. The most that one can ever hope for from data collected under other assumptions and for other purposes than one's own are oblique hints, gaps that one's own hypotheses might fill, puzzles set aside that might begin to make sense in the context of a different framework. However, if one finds any of these at all, it is a reasonable assumption that a purposeful search of raw data sources would reveal much more-something comparable to the invisible eight-ninths of the iceberg.
With regard
to the
second word
of caution,
I can
lay claim
to no
special expertise
in
the field
of child
language. In
creoles, I have
fourteen years'
experience, most
of them
spent in
direct contact
with native
creole speakers,
so that
I can
speak in
that field
with some degree
of confidence.
In language
acquisition, I
can claim
to be
no
' more than an assiduous reader of the literature, and in consequence, both. my knowledge and my understanding may be at fault some
:mies. On the credit side, l can only offer complete uninvolvement m any of the controversies that have racked the field (for, as we shall see, my position, although innatist, is really no closer to the orthodox Chomskyan one than it is to the "motherese" school), and the freshness
of perspective that a novel viewpoint may on occasion bring. So be it: the facts will decide.
Finally, a word of caution about the theory. Straw-man versions
144 ROOTS OF LANGUAGE
of
innatist
theories
abound,
and
in
particular,
those
which
claim
that
to
stress
the
function
of
an
innate
component
in
acquisition
is
auto
matically
equivalent
to
completely
writing
off
all
other
modes
of
learning
and
all
other
aids
to
learning.
In
the
present
case,
this
par
ticular
straw
man
has
even
less
substance
than
usual.
The
language
bioprogram
theory
is,
as
we
shall
see
in
Chapter
4,
an
evolutionary
theory,
and
the
bioprogram
itself
is
an
adaptive
evolutionary
device.
Now,
it
is
the
nature
of
such
devices
that
they
are
facilitatory
,
not
pre-emptive;
that
is
to
say
,
their
whole
adaptive
function
is
lost
if
they
force
a
species
into
a
position
where
that
species
is
dependent
upon
them
and
upon
them
alone,
by
inhibiting
the
action
of
other
adaptive
processes.
In
addition
to
whatever
we
may
have
in
the
way
of
innate
language
equipment,
we
also
have
a
wide
variety
of
learning
strategies
and
problem-solving
routines
which
are
applicable
to
a
range
of
situations
far
broader
than
language.
It
would
be
absurd
to
suppose
that
in
the
presence
of
data
classified
as
"linguistic,"
all
these
routines
and
strategies
should
simply
switch
off.
It would be equally absurd to suppose that they and the innate language component would be always and necessarily at war with one another. Sometimes their respective promptings may combine, some times they may point in opposite directions; which way is an empirical issue at anY given point. But their interaction must form the core of any complete description of language acquisition. If Ihave ignored
other resources in the present study , and have concentrated solely on the innate component, that is for strategic purposes only; besides, general cognitive processes have had far more than equal time in the last decade, and the turn of hardcore syntax and semantics has come around again. But Ibelieve that in order to acquire language-a feat which is, so far as we yet know, without parallel in the entire universe we need every ounce of help, particular or general, innate or acquired through experience, that we can get. To pit one kind against another simply demonstrates a failure to understand how complex language really is.2
\
ACQUISITION 145
"."'ith
these
preliminaries
disposed
of,
we
can
begin
our
review.
The
eVJdence
we
shall
consider
will
fall
into
two
quite
separate
classes.
One
class
will
consist
of
the
"incorrect
hypotheses"
which,
in
the
course
of
language
acquisition,
children
often
make,
yet
which
often
seem
t
have
o
simpfo
explanation
either
in
the
structure
of
the
input
th
child
receives
or
m
any
general
theory
of
acquisition.
The
simi
lanty
between
such
"hypotheses"
and
the
structures
which
actually
em_ege
as
part
of
the
grammars
of
creole
languages
is
often
quite
smk1:1g,
and
when
I
first
contemplated
writing
this
chapter,
Ifelt
certain
that
examples
drawn
from
this
class
would
constitute
by
far
the strongest evidence in favor of the bioprogram theory. After writing
the first draft of this chapter, however, I became much less certain, not so much because of the weakness of the original evidence-although there are. some phenomena, as Ishall show, which may allow alternative explanations-but because of the growing impression that a much subtler and less obvious class of evidence made on me.
. As the "icorret hypotheses" suggested, there were many things m language .which children seemed to find quite difficult to learn, often spendmg years before they acquired full control over the struc. tuts concerned. n the other hand, there were certain other things wluch. seemed to .g e diem no trouble at all, which they learned very early m the acqmsmon process and/or without any of the "mistakes" which arose so frequently in other areas. On principle, one might suppose that these differences correlated with some kind of scale of relative difficulty, and yet it was extremely difficult to see exactlv what objective factors might constitute such a scale. Indeed, from commonsense linguistic viewpoint, some of the things that were easily and effortlessly acquired looked a lot more difficult to learn than some of the things that gave so much trouble.
But obviously, to talk about things being "difficult" or "easy" from an adult standpoint is totally irrelevant in an acquisition context. What is "difficult" or "easy" for the child is all that is of interest and one might therefore conclude that what seems "difficult" to u; might seem "easy" to the child, and vice versa. However, a moment's
146 ROOTS OF
LANGUAGE
thought should show that it was not so much the adult viewpoint as the use of the words "easy" and "difficult" themselves that was at fault in our original formulation.
Terms like "easy" and "difficult" imply an act of evaluation
which in t urn depends on the capacity to compare one task with another, which in turn depends on prior experience of tasks with differing levels of difficulty. Thus, when we acquire a second language, we can say that its derivational morphology, for example, is difficult to learn, while its relativization processes, say, are relatively easy. Such remarks are meaningful only because we already know a language and can measure features of the second language against those of the first. If we had not previously learned a language, we would have no standard of comparison; moreover, it is at least in part the nature of what we have already learned that determines whether what we are now about to learn will turn out easy or difficult for us.
Now, if we say that something is easy for a two-year-old to
learn, we cannot possibly mean any of this; all we can mean is that the child is somehow preadapted to learn that thing, rather than other things, or that in terms of the present theory , he is programmed to learn it. If, as we shall see is the case, the things that children learn early, effortlessly, and errorlessly turn out repeatedly to be key features of creole languages, which the children of first creole generations acquire in the absence of direct experience, we can then assume that such early, effortless, and errorless learning results, not from charac teristics of the input, or from the efforts of the mother-since the features involved are often too abstract to be known to any but the professional linguist-but rather from the functioning of the innate bioprogram which we have hypothesized.
I find evidence of this second class to be even more convincing
than that drawn from systematic error, and will accordingly begin by considering some examples of it. The first concerns the learning of the specific-nonspecific distinction (henceforth SNSD) by English speaking children. This distinction, as we saw in Chapters 1 and 2, is explicitly represented in all creole grammars by the opposition
\
ACQUISITION 147
between zero and realized determiners. It is expressed in English too, but much more obliquely, as we will see.
The most comprehensive study of the acquisition of English articles is that of Maratsos (1974, 1976), who confirmed by means of ingenious experiments the naturalistic observations of Brown ( 1973), i.e., that the article system is mastered at a very early age. Some of Maratsos' findings have been questioned in subsequent work (Warden 1976, Karmiloff-Smith 1979), but such criticisms relate only to the earliness with which the definite-nondefinite distinction is acquired. No one ·has challenged Maratsos' finding that the SNSD is handled virtually without error by three-year-olds, well ahead of the earliest date by which the child masters the definite-nondefinite distinction.
At first sight, this is an odd finding since the latter distinction is clearly marked in English, while the SNSD is not. In English, "definite" really means presumed known to the listener, whether by prior knowledge ( "the man you met yesterday"), uniqueness in the universe ( "the sun is setting") , uniqueness in a given setting ( "the battery is dead"-cars do not usually have more than one battery), or general knowledge that a named class exists ("the dog is the friend of man"). "Indefinite" really means presumed unknown to the listener, whether by absence of prior knowledge ("a man you should meet is Mr. Blank"), nonexistence of a nameable referent ("Bill is looking for a wife"), or nonexistence of any referent ("George couldn't see an aardvark anywhere"). In other words, the two classes are systematically distinguished by the distribution of the and a/an.
Specific and nonspecific, however, are not systematically dis tinguished. Consider the following:
/1/ If you're sick, you should see the doctor (NS).
/2/ Call the doctor who treated Marge (S).
/3/ The doctor may succeed where the priest fails (NS).
I4I Dogs are mammals (NS).
/5/ The dog is a mammal (NS).
/6/ A dog is a mammal (NS).
148 ROOTS OF LANGUAGE
171 A dog just bit me (S).
/8/ Mary can't stand to have a dog in the room (NS).
In fact·, the only way in which English distinguishes specifics from nonspecifics is in constructions with at least two articles. If a given referent is specific, it will receive a on first mention and the on second and subsequent mention:
/9/ Bill bought a cat and a dog, but the children only like the dog.
If a given referent is nonspecific, it will receive a on first mention and on second and subsequent mention:
/10/ Bill wanted to buy a cat and a dog, but he couldn't find a dog
that he really liked.
Maratsos constructed
an ingenious
set of
stories which
his child subjects
were asked
to complete.
In
some of
the stories,
reference was
made to a
specific entity;
in others,
to a nonspecific
entity; in
both cases,
naturally, the
entity was
introduced into
the story
as a
NP.
However,
the completion
task required
the child
to produce
a
NP
just
in case the
entity was
nonspecific, and
the
NP
just in
case the
entity was
specific, in
accordance with
the rule
illustrated in
/9/
and /10/
above (for
full texts
of the stories
and a
more complete
description
of the
experiments, see
Maratsos 1976).
The success rate in this experiment was almost 90 percent for three-vear-olds and over 90 percent for four-year-olds. In order to maintin these high rates, the children had to determine that out of some NPs identically marked, half had specific real-world referents and half had not. The stories were original and contained no contextual clues as to the status of the referents. How did the children succeed so often?
Maratsos himself was surprised and impressed by his subjects' capacities, and he discusses the implications of his experiments at
'
ACQUISITION 149
some length
and with
great insight.
He notes
that the
high frequency
0f articles in adult speech is often regarded as an adequate explanation
.
0f
the
relative earliness
and lack of
error shown
in the
acquisition of
articles. He
points out,
however, that
"although
the frequency
of [articles'] use
may somehow
serve to
bring them
to the
child's
atten tion
and provide
data for him,
he must
still select
and attach
to the articles
just those
abstract .
differences in
the circumstances
of
their use that
correspond to
the specific-nonspecific
distinction. One
clear requirement is
that he
have
available some
conceptual understanding
of such matters
as the
difference between
the
notion of
any member (or
no member)
of a
class and
that of
a particular
class member.
This understanding must
be sufficiently
well articulated
for the
child to perceive
just this
difference in
the circumstances
of use
of the
definite and indefinite
morphemes and
construct the
meaning of
the terms
accordingly" (Maratsos
1974:453).
Let us try to reconstruct the process or processes by which the child might arrive at this perception. We will ignore the problems that arise from the child's original isolation and recognition of articles, although these are far from trivial (especially with a, so frequently reduced to an unstressed schwa and so closely linked to its following NP that morpheme boundary perception becomes quite difficult), and deal solely with how, having recognized them, he determines their functions. If the conventional accounts are correct, the child can do this in only two ways-through linguistic context or through extralinguistic context.
The nature
of the
problems involved
can be
better understood
if we
compare the
acquisition of
articles with
the acquisition
of plural marking,
which occurs
at roughly
the same
age (a
very few
weeks later,
according to
Brown 1973).
The plural
morpheme marks
a single,
straightforward
distinction-one/more than
one-and it
does so bi
uniquely, that
is to
say, in
a one-morpheme,
one-meaning relationship: when
the morpheme
is present,
one meaning
is entailed;
when it
is
absent, the
other meaning
is entailed.
Articles are,
from a
purely formal
viewpoint, much
more complex
than that.
Three articles,
the,
a,
and
150 ROOTS
OF LANGUAGE
zero, represent two distinctions-supposed-known-to-listener I sup posed-unknown-to-listener and specific-referent I no-specific-referent but without the biuniqueness that relates semantics to surface repre sentation in the c'ase of plurals. Instead, with regard to the second distinction only (the SNSD), there are two morphemes with one meaning (both a and the can have specific reference) and one mor pheme with two meanings (a can be both specific and nonspecific).
Let us suppose that the child can first factor out the distinction between o, and the (although in fact he cannot even rely on this aid; Warden [1976] and Karmiloff-Smith [1979] show that it will be several years before he is able to overcome this potential distraction). He then has to distinguish specific from nonspecific a. One might think he could do this by distinguishing between linguistic environ ments. For instance, the scope of negation is often crucial in determin ing whether a given occurrence of a NP is specific or nonspecific: the difference between I saw a dog (S) and I didn't see a dog (NS), for instance. So is the scope of desiderative verbs: the difference between I want a dog (NS) and I have a dog (S). Those who put their trust in extralinguistic context will, however, point out, quite correctly , that things like desiderative scope and negative scope are themselves ex tremely abstract relations, unlikely to be capturable by two-year-olds.
But in fact the problem is even tougher than we have suggested; there are many cases in which a mere tense switch marks the SNSD:
/11/ When you see a dog (NS) , are you frightened?
/12/ When you saw a dog (S), were you frightened?
Since the child's control of tense is, at the appropriate age, highly questionable at best, it is implausible to suppose that he could utilize such clues.3 Again, there are cases when desiderative scope alone is insufficient to mark the distinction:
/13/ Your little sister wants a dog-any kind of dog (NS).
/14/ Your little sister wants a dog-and it's that one (S)!
\
ACQUISITION 151
In fact, the only reliable indicator of the SNSD is not a single article use, but a series of articles uses; an a-a sequence, as in /10/ above, as opposed to an a-the sequence, as in /9 / above.
However, as Maratsos (1976:95) again points out, it is at least highly questionable whether the child can take advantage of clues provided by sequences, especially when members of such sequences are not necessarily adjacent-as they are in /9 / and /10/-but may be separated by several sentences: "It is easy to forget that the child, to the best of our present knowledge, does not have an extensive corpus of data at any one time with which to work. He probably cannot record numerous long stretches of conversation and all of the con textual information that accompanied them, as can an adult linguist investigating a novel language."
We must therefore conclude that a child would be, at best, highly unlikely to derive the SNSD from analysis of purely linguistic context.
Yet is it any more likely that he could learn it from physical
experience or any other kind of extralinguistic source? As noted above, recent studies have concentrated heavily on the here-and-newness of speech aimed at children, and on the child's prelinguistic experiences in the world of objects. It is hard to see just how either of these could help with the SNSD. As Maratsos (1976:94) remarks, "specific and nonspecific reference are connected in no clear way with external physical attributes or relations of perceived objects." For example, nonspecific reference is usually (although not always) made in the absence of any member of the referent class: we don't have a doggy, Daddy's looking for a doggy for you, a doggy would be nice to play with, wouldn't it? and so on. But specific reference is made just as often in the absence of the referent : a dog bit Jessie yesterd ay, I saw a dog you'd really have liked in town today, and so on. How does the child determine that of the two absent sets of referents one is concrete while the other is only hypothetical? If he did not do so, he would score no better than chance on Maratsos' tests.
152 ROOTS OF LANGUAGE
While it is true that many concepts are formed by the child prior to language learning, these are generally concepts which relate to physical objects which the child can see, touch, etc. Moreover, it is reasonably clear that such concepts ARE arrived at by interaction with experience rather than by merely processing language input. If the child only processed linguistic tokens of dog, for example, he would pre sumably apply the term only to members of the appropriate species; whereas, as is well known, the initial meaning of dog, for the child, is likely to be 'any four-legged mammal'. Thus, we know that the child reaches out ahead of linguistic experience, so to speak, in order
to derive ways of talking about the world.
But how could the child derive knowledge of purely abstract relationships from direct experience? A comparison with plural-marking acquisition is again very much to the point. Plural marking is directly associated with relations that the child is physically able to observe. He can see and feel at any given time whether he has one toy or several, whether he is allowed only one cookie or more than one ; the gramma tical marking of nouns correlates directly with manifest and obvious differences in his perceptual field. But the distinction between an actual member of a class (which more often than not is not physically present) and an imaginary representative of that same class is in no way one that · can be determined by the organs of perception, or inferred from any kind of direct experience. The SNSD involves comparisons, not between physical entities, but between purely mental representations; one can only marvel that a child, for whom the boundaries between . real and unreal are notoriously vague, should be able to make it at
all, by any means.
Indeed, that he should even hypothesize such a distinction-a would, presumably, be claimed by those who believe in a hypothesis• forming, hypothesis-testing LAD-is highly implausible. Even abou possible functions of a and the, there are many possible hypothese that might be made. Since definites tend to be subjects while indefinite tend to be objects, one might hypothesize that the marks agents and
ACQUISITION 153
a
marks
patients.
Since
the
often
co-occurs
with
NPs
that
are
physically
present
and
a
with
NPs
that
are
physically
absent
one
might
hy
pothesize
that
the
and
a
mark
poles
of
some
kind
of
proximal-distal
distinction.
In
fact,
so
far
as
we
know,
such
hypotheses
are
never
made.
In
any
case,
they
would
affect
only
a
and
the;
with
regard
to
a
alone,
why
on
earth
should
the
child
even
start
by
hypothesizing
that
there
are
really
two
kinds
of
a?
Moreover,
since
two-year-olds
use
few
or
no
articles,
and
the
SNSD
is
acquired
by
about
the
age
of
three,
it
would
have
to
be
just
about
the
first
hypothesis
the
child
makes
there
would
hardly
be
time
to
frame
and
discard
any
other.
To
say
that
the
child
invariably
forms
a
correct
hypothesis
about
the
SNSD
as
his
first
hypothesis
is
simply
an
issue-dodging
way
of
saying
that
he
is
programmed
to
make
the
SNSD.
Indeed, we can only conclude that the SNSD would be quite impossible to learn, by means of linguistic data, or of experience, or of any hypothesis-forming process, or of any feasible combination of these. For the child to make the SNSD as early and as successfully as he does, he would have to be somehow preprogrammed to make it.
This proposal is strongly supported by the creole data reviewed in Chapters 1 and 2. We saw there that the SNSD was made by the first creole generation in Hawaii (even though none of their HPE-speaking parents made it ) and that it is made consistently, and always by the same means, in all creole languages. If we assume a language bioprogram that includes the SNSD in its specifications, the prob]P.m of how the
,child acquires that distinction in English becomes a manageable nne. The child knows of the distinction in advance and is therefore looking put (at a purely subconscious level, of course) for surface features
.m the target language that will mark it. If no other feature is pre
programmed for NP, which is likely, then the fact that the SNSD
. constit utes the child's first "hypothesis" is no longer bewildering, but
.M automatic consequence of the theory.
The skeptical reader may, however, ask: if creole children follow ing the bioprogram universally mark the SNSD by allotting zero mark
. ing to nonspecifics, how is it that children learning English, prior to
154 ROOTS
OF LANGUAGE
correctly interpreting the two as, do not mark, or at least attempt to mark, nonspedfics with zero, as creole children do? The answer is that we do not know that they do not.
Earlier, I referred to deficiencies in the data due to excessive
concentration on the goals rather than the paths of acquisition. Here is a case in point. Even as conscientious and insightful a scholar as Maratsos confesses (1974:450) that "only full noun phrases of the form article plus noun were counted; answers which included no article, such as boy, were not counted in the analysis." Another careful inves tigator, Brown (1973), who allots some sixteen pages to a discussion of articles in early child speech, makes no reference to zero forms, and in what he claims is a "full list of errors in definite and nondefmite reference for Adam, Eve and Sarah from Stages IV and V" (1973: Table 51) includes only cases of a where the is indicated, and cases of the where a is indicated-no zeros at all. Yet from what Maratsos says, and from mere common sense, one knows there must have been zeros; after all, the child has no articles at the two-word stage, and obviously does not acquire the surface forms overnight.
The present theory predicts that when a substantial body of early child language is properly examined, there will be found to be a significant skewing in article placement, such that a significantly higher percentage of articles will be assigned to specific-reference NP, while zero forms will persist in nonspecific environments longer than elsewhere. Such examination affords a simple and straightforward means of empirically testing the claims made about the innateness of the SNSD in this chapter.
We will now examine another distinction which is made even earlier and without , apparently, even a single reported case of error. This is the distinction between states and processes, including under the latter rubric verbs of experiencing as well as action verbs (hereafter referred to as the state-process distinction, or SPD). The SPD is di rectly involved in the acquisition of the English progressive marker
-ing.
\
ACQUISITION 155
In general, the acquisition of novel morphology by the child is attended by cases of over-generalization, a number of which are dis cussed in Cazden (1968). Thus, the consistency in the final segments of possessive pronouns leads to production of the aberrant form *mines, while plurals such as *sheeps, *foots (or *feets), *mouses, etc., and past-tense forms such as *corned, *goed (or *wented), *buyed, etc., occur in the speech of most, if not all, child learners of English.
The -ing form is acquired even earlier than the -ed form (before
any of the other thirteen morphemes studied in Brown [1973], and as early as the second year in at least some cases). Also, just as there are verbs that do not take -ed, there are verbs that do not take -ing (with certain qualifications, see Sag 1973), such as lik e, want, know, see, etc. These verbs are quite common in children's speech, probably as common as many of the irregular verbs to which children incor rectly attach -ed. Yet, apparently, children never ever attach -ing to stative verbs.
Kuczaj (1978) has argued that the two cases are not really commensurate since with the past tense there are other ways of mark ing than -ed (just as with plurals there are other ways of marking than
-s), whereas in the case of -ing, English has no alternative way of marking progressive aspect. This argument is somewhat disingenuous since zero can be a term in a subsystem, and it is hard to see what the difference would be between, on the one hand, adding -s to sheep to make sheeps or -ed to put to make putted , and, on the other hand, adding -ing to like to yield I am liking you. A more pertinent observa tion would be that verbs which do not take -ing, as opposed to verbs which do not take -ed or nouns which do not take -s, constitute a natural semantic class; we shall return to this point in a moment.
In fact, Kuczaj undercuts his own argument by observing that children do indeed over-generalize -ing, but not to stative verbs rather, to nonverbal items, as in /15/:
/15/ Why is it weathering?
(presumably, 'Why is the weather so bad?')
156 ROOTS
OF LAi'\IGUAGE
Note that, in fact, weather is a plausible candidate for admission to the list of "climatic" verbs that yield expressions such as it is raining / snowing /thundering, etc. But all these verbs have in common the fact that they are nonstatives, as weather would be also if it were a verb in the sense of /15/. The fact that children will generalize -ing even to nouns IF AND ONLY IF SUCH NOUNS HAVE A PLAUSIBLE
NONSTATIVE READING makes their abstemiousness with respect to stative verbs even more significant.
Brown (1973:326ff.) rightly regards it as remarkable that chil dren should be "able to learn a concept like involuntary state before they [are] three years old," and explores several hypotheses which might account for such learning. In the case of one child, Eve, he was able to show that many nonstatives, as well as statives, were unmarked by -ing, and that the unmarked nonstatives were precisely those which Eve's mother seldom used with progressive aspect ; on the other hand, the nonstatives which the mother did use frequently with -ing were precisely those which appeared with -ing in Eve's speech. However, a similar relationship did not hold for the other children in Brown's study; and as Brown himself pointed out, even if it had held, it would not have provided a solution. For anyone who claimed that children delayed applying -Ing to a verb until they learned from experience that it was "-ingable" would then be forced to explain why a similar caution and restraint was not applied to other morphemes, like -ed and -s, where over-generalizations abounded.
Brown next considered the possibility that the SPD was learned from imperatives and transferred to progressives, since the verbs that will not take -ing are just those that cannot be used in the imperative. Against this possibility, Brown argued that it would depend also on imperative usage being errorless; and it was simply impossible to tell whether this was the case since, especially in Stage I, children's impera tives are often formally indistinguishable from their declaratives ( want cookie looks like an imperative, but is probably no more than the child's version of 'I want a cookie').
A stronger argument against t)ie "imperative transfer" hypothesis,
ACQUISITION 157
not made by Brown, involves first recognizing that Brown's argument is in error; children could learn imperatives through trial and error and, having learned at last the list of verbs which could not be imperatives, simply apply that knowledge to the learning of -ing. But trial-and-error learning of imperatives is more implausible than errorless learning of imperatives, and for the following reason: in trial-and-error learning, the child must correct himself simply through observing that others produce forms different from his (we know that overt correction of grammar, as opposed to content, is rare among parents). Thus, the child who says drinked eventually becomes aware that others say drank , and revises his grammar accordingly. If such things did not come to his attention, he would presumably go on saying drinked indefinitely.
But negative evidence cannot function in this way. Let us sup pose that the child who said want cookie really was urging someone else to desire a cookie. Would the fact that he did NOT hear others saying
*want some chocolate or *hate naughty bunny deter him? It is hardly likely. I know of no facts which would indicate that a child needs positive reinforcement, as well as an absence of counterexamples, in order to maintain his current grammar. The child may be diverted from that ammar by the existence of contradictory forms to which he is obliged to pay attention; we can hardly expect him to pay atten tion to something that is NOT happening.
Moreover, on a purely pra,a,matic basis, trial-and-error learning of imperatives is unlikely. A child's early imperatives are all action oriented, aimed at getting people to pick him up or put him down, bring nice things to him and take nasty things away. It would be bizarre if he sought instead to influence the thought-processes and emotions of others by commanding them to want, need, know, etc. In fact, the likeliest possibility is that children do not acquire the SPD from imperatives, either errorlessly or by trial and error, because they them selves would only ever need nonstative imperatives for pragmatic reasons. They would not know whether statives could be used as imperatives because the opportunity for such use would simply not
158 ROOTS OF
LANGUAGE
have occurred-unless of course they were already programmed with the SPD, and thus "knew" that such uses were impossible, without requiring experience to prove it.
But whereas the use of imperative statives might seem bizarre, the use of progressive -ing with statives would surely appear, to a child not programmed with the SPD, to be the most natural thing in the world. For -ing is applied to verbs with present reference, and when a child wants or sees or likes something, it is right now that he does it.
*I wanting teddy (now) or *I seeing pussy (now) would surely appear, to such a child, every bit as grammatical as I playing pee kaboo (now) or I sitting potty (now). Nobody could claim that the distinction emerged from experience, or from context; on the contrary, both experience and context would point in a contrary direction.
Finally, Brown considered the possibility that the distinction is innately known. However, he rejects this possibility because of what he claims are "fatal difficulties." Since neither he nor other scholars who have discussed the issue (e.g., Kuczaj 1978, Fletcher 1979) have advanced any serious alternative to the innatist suggestion, we should examine Brown's "difficulties"-bearing in mind that they arose out of a theory of innateness quite different from this one-and see whether they are really as "fatal" as he believes.
The first difficulty is that, according to Brown, children do not behave as innatist theory predicts with respect to categories other than state-process. If they came equipped with a full set of syntactic and/or semantic subcategories, "they ought to attempt to order regular and irregular inflections in terms of one or another of the innate subcate gories. They should test the hypothesis that verbs that take -d [sic] in the past are all transitives and the others intransitives or that those that take -d are animate actions and the others not, or something of this kind" (1973:328). Of course, this does not happen, and because it does not happen with distinctions other than the SPD, Brown con cludes that the SPD cannot be innate.
Now this argument makes sense only if you assume, first, that
\
ACQUISITION 159
children are born with all the subcategorization features of an Aspects grammar in their heads (a view Brown specifically attributes to McNeil! [1966] ), and second, that children, like junior linguists, acquire gram mars by formulating and testing hypotheses. The present theory as sumes neither of these things. Thus, the fact that other distinctions were treated differently from the SPD could never constitute an argu ment against the innateness of the SPD, unless it could be shown that those other distinctions also formed part of the bioprogram. To do that, it would be necessary to show that those distinctions were for mally marked in creole languages. In creoles, animate actions are not formally distinguished from other types of action, and transitive verbs are not formally distinguished from intransitive verbs-quite the reverse, indeed, as we saw in the section on Passive Equivalents in Chapter 2, and as we shall see again later in this chapter. Thus, the child hy potheses Brown suggests would not make any kind of sense in light of the present theory, even if that theory supposed that children test hypotheses-which it does not.
Brown's second difficulty is that the SPD is "a poor candidate
for innateness" because it is "very far from being universal in the world's languages." The problems foreign learners have with English progressives and a claim by Joos (1964) that English is "unique or almost unique" in possessing the SPD are adduced as evidence for this contention.
Again, in the present theory, whether or not a given feature is common to all the world's languages is quite irrelevant. All previous universals theories have been static theories, which assume that lan guage is always and everywhere the same; if one accepts this, it follows that only features that occur in all languages can really qualify as can didates for innateness. But the present theory is a dynamic, evolu tionary theory which assumes that language had a starting point and a sequence of developments, which are recycled, in rather different ways, inhoth creole formation and child acquisition, as well as perhaps in certain types of linguistic change (consideration of which would take us beyond the scope of the present volume). What is innate is therefore
160 ROOTS OF LANGUAGE
what was there at the beginning of the sequence, and thus there is not the slightest reason to suppose that innate features will automati cally persist and be found in the structure of all synchronic languages indeed, given the nature of dynamic processes, this would be an ex tremely unlikely result.
In other words, the SPD is presumed to be innate, not because of its universality, which may well be as low as Brown suggests, but because it plays a crucial role in creole grammars. There, statives are distinguished from nonstatives by the fact that the nonpunctual marker never attaches to the former ; but that is by no means the only signifi cant difference between the treatment of the two categories. The SPD causes a characteristic skewing of the creole TMA system, not explicitly treated in the present volume, but discussed at some length in Bicker ton (197 5 :Chapter 2). Briefly, there is a significant difference between creole and ludo-European systems which takes the following form. In the latter, the same morphological marking applies to both statives and nonstatives in any given tense; this seems so obvious that it is never even remarked on. In creoles, however, present-reference statives and present-reference 11onstatives carmot be marked in the same way, and the same applies to past-reference statives and nonstatives. The pattern for GC, which we may take as typical in this respect, is given in Table 3.1 below:
ACQUISITION 161
in creole grammar, his second objection to the innateness of the SPD is also deprived of its force.
However, Brown's claim that, if a distinction were genuinely
innate, it might be generalized to inappropriate environments (cited above in discussion of his fi'rst objection), is a reasonable one if it is made with respect to distinctions found in the bioprogram (as opposed to distinctions supposedly innate by the standards of other theories). An example which looks, from the data available so far, somewhat like
an inappropriate generalization of the SPD is found in data on the
acquisition of Turkish in Slobin and Aksu (1980).
Turkish has two morphemes used for marking pasHeference verbs: -dI and -mis. These are used in adult speech to mark direct experience (events personally observed by the speaker) and indirect experience (events reported to or inferred by the speaker), respectively. According to Slobin and Aksu, -dI is usually acquired by age 1:9, and 'mls about three months later (i.e., about the same age as -ing is ac· quired). But "at first the -dI and -mis inflections differentiate between dynamic and static events . . . . (C)lear differentiation of the two
forms [according to their adult meanings, D.B.] is not stabilized until.about 4:6."4
The delay in acquisition is even more significant since most features of Turkish verb morphology are fully acquired at age 3:0. Although "evidential" tenses are found elsewhere (for example, in some
Present reference Past reference
Stative (/J bin
Table 3.1
Nonstative a
(/J
American Indian languages such as Hopi), they are completely un known in "all creoles. From these two facts, we may conclude that the ditect/inditect experience distinction does not form part of the bio program, and .we may further hypothesize that non-bioprogram dis· tinctions that have emerged in natural languages are particularly vulner·
Stative-nonstative distinctions
in GC
Thus, without a clear understanding of the SPD, the creole TMA system would be quite unworkable.
Since Brown believed that universality was the criterion for innateness, while the criterion for the bioprogram theory is emergence
\
able to reinterpretation in the conrse of the acquisition process. Such reinterpretation would naturally involve the assumption that the
surface markers of a non-bioprogram distinction were really marking a distinction . established in the bioprogram which is exactly what seems to be happening in the Turkish case. Certainly, any case of unusually delayed acquisition may tum out to be evidence as conclusive
162 ROOTS OF LANGUAGE
of the workings of the bioprogram as are cases of early and errorless acquisition, once the mechanisms of interaction between bioprogram and target language are adequately understood.
We may therefore place the SPD alongside the SNSD as a second
semantic distinction
(with important
syntactic consequences)
which is innately
programmed. But
consideration of
the SPD
naturally prompts
the question:
since among
the most
distinctive features
of creoles
is their
distinctive TMA
system, should
it not
be the
case that
this or
a similar system
emerges at
some stage
of acquisition,
if indeed
a uni
versal genetic
program generates
such a
system?
This question will serve to focus more sharply on the nature of bioprogram-target interaction, briefly mentioned two paragraphs above. In the present volume, emphasis is placed on the first member of the pair, for obvious reasons: until students of acquisition are convinced that a bioprogram is really operative, it is premature to talk too much about how such a bioprograrn might interact with other components of the acquisition process. But such emphasis can lead all too easily to a familiar straw man: the innate component which is supposed to roll like some irresistible juggernaut through the years of acquisition, sweeping all other influences aside. After the all too easy demolition of this travesty, the empiricist thinks he has disposed of innatism.
In fact, no
innate program
could or
should behave
in this
way. From one
viewpoint, the
child is
a biophysical
organism evolving
along the genetic
lines laid
down for
its species,
but from
another and
equally valid
perspective, the
child is
a sociocultural
organism growing
up into membership
of a
particular human
community. The
pressures from the
second side
of being
human must
inevitably mold
the impulses of
the first-the
more so
since biophysical
characteristics are
typically more
general and
cultural characteristics
more highly
specified. Thus,
from an
early age-certainly
from age
two upward-we
would expect
that in
a "natural"
acquisition situation,
as distinct
from a
pidgin creole one,
the pattern of
the bioprogram
would be
gradually shifted
in the
direction of
the target-language
pattern.
Such shifting must inevitabl}'. affect the formation of a TMA
ACQUISITION 163
system. Since
virtually all
the relevant
literature deals
with acquisition
of particular
pieces of
such systems,
rather than
with such
systems as wholes,
it is
difficult to
say at
what age
the child
fully controls
the TMA system
of his mother
tongue; but
it is
highly doubtful
whether such control
is achieved
prior to
age four,
and likely
that it
may come
considerably later
than that.
This means
that the
acquisition of
TMA must spread
over at
least two
years, two
years during
which the
pres sure of
the target
grammar on
the evolving
bioprogram is
steady and
continuous. It
would therefore
be highly
unrealistic to
expect any
child at any
stage of
acquisition to
exhibit anything
like a
fully-developed creole
TMA system.
The most
that we
could expect
would be
that acquisition of
the earlier
features of
TMA systems
would be
influ enced in
rather
oblique ways.
However, if
the results
of such
influence should prove
mysterious to
other theories
of acquisition,
yet follow
logically from
the present
one, even
such oblique
evidence would
be significant.
Accordingly, I shall re-examine two of the most influential papers on the acquisition of tense: Bronckart and Sinclair (1973) and Antinucci and Miller (1976); and I shall show that some puzzling features of those studies become immediately clear once we assume that while the subjects of these studies appear to be merely learning French and Italian, respectively, the bioprogram decisively influences the progress of their acquisition.
One point must be made fu:st, however. With few exceptions, students of acquisition assume that when a child uses a past-tense form, he uses it because he fully understands, and deliberately intends t mark, pastness of reference.5 True, it is often admitted (e.g., by Antinucci and Miller (1976]) that the child's concept of past may be restricted as compared with the adult's, and may extend only to past events. that leave. presently-observable consequences; but it is still assumed, without question, that where past marking appears, some sort of concept of past must be there too.
This by no means necessarily follows. All we can say is that
164 ROOTS OF LANGUAGE
ACQUISITION 165
during the period
in which
past tense
is being
acquired, some
past· reference verbs
are tense.marked
while some
are not.
There are several
possible explanations
of why
this is
so, none
of which
can be
ruled
GC
Past-marking rate
Punctual
38%
Nonpunctual
12%
out a priori.
The child
may have
acquired a full
past rule
but may
apply it unpredictably because of lapses of attention, phonological difficulties, etc. The child may have acquired a partial past rule which applies only to a subset of past.reference verbs. The child may have acquired a rule that has nothing at all to do with pastness or non pastness, but which just happens, coincidentally, to mark a certain percentage of past-tense verbs. Which of these explanations is the correct one can only be determined by empirical investigation in each individual case.
Since the study of variable data is much further advanced in decreolization than it is in acquisition, it should be instructive to look at another situation where variable past-morpheme insertion takes place. In creoles, past tense is not a category. But when creoles begin to decreolize, past-tense markers begin to be introduced, occurring sporadically just as they do in child acquisition.
At first, one might interpret such data just as similar child language data have been interpreted the speakers have an established past category but do not always mark it. However, analyses of de creolization in both Guyana and Hawaii (Bickerton 1975:142-61; 1977:36-51), with a data base of a thousand past-reference verbs in both cases, suggest quite a different picture.
On the assumption that speakers had a past category, one would have to conclude that decreolizing GC speakers randomly inserted past morphemes 27 percent of the time while decreolizing HCE speak ers did so 30 percent of the time. However, when all past-reference verbs were divided into two categories-those that referred to SINGLE, PUNCTUAL EVENTS, and those that referred to iterative or habitual events-insertion rates were shown to vary widely between the two categories, as shown in Table 3.2:
'
HCE 53% 7%
Table 3.2
Past versus punct ual in decreolization
In other words, what was being marked in both sets of data was not really pastness, bnt rather punctuality.
The punctual-nonpunctual distinction (henceforth PNPD) is related to, yet distinct from, ·the SPD, and is of equal importance in creole grammar. Since both decreolization and acquisition involve the introduction of "past" marking where none was before, it should at least be worthwhile examining acquisitional data to see whether punctuality plays the same role in the second as it does in the f:trst. We should certainly do well to bear this possibility in mind while we reconsider previous findings on past-tense acquisition.
We may now turn to the first of the two papers cited above, Bronckart and Sinclair (1973). The authors' starting point was their informal observation that when children were asked to describe past events, their choice of tense often seemed to be influenced by the nature of the event : if the latter was one of some duration, like washing a car, they would tend to use il lave la voiture 'He washes/is washing the car', rather thaniia lave la voiture 'He washed the car'; whereas if the
event was a punctual one, like kicking a ball, they would use ii a pousse
la balle 'He kicked the ball', and seldom if ever substitute il pousse la
balle 'He kicks/is kicking the ball'.
Normally, the opposition betweeniilave andiia lave is treated as a simple past-present opposition, but of course this is not the case. The "present" tense in French is in fact a nonpunctual aspect which does not extend into the past (unlike that of creoles); but, like a creole nonpunctual aspect, it embraces both iterative and Jurative events.
166 ROOTS
OF LANGUAGE
Similarly, the "past" is not a simple past in the sense of English simple past. English simple past is applicable to past-punct ual and past-iterative (but not always to past-0.urative) reference; French avoir + participle is limited to past punct uals, while past iteratives and past duratives are rendered by the so-called "imperfect" form, e.g., il lavait rather
thaniia lave.
In other words, when French children use different verb forms for different kinds of past events, they are doing exactly the same as creole speakers, who always mark nonpunctual pasts differently from
punctual pasts.
Bronckart and Sinclair confirmed and quantified their original observation by asking 74 children to describe (after the event) different types of actions which the investigators performed with the aid of a series of toys. Ages of the children ranged from under 3 to nearly 9. Eleven actions were performed. Of these, six were actions which had a clear goal or result (e.g., "a car hits a marble which rolls very rapidly into a pocket"), while two were actions which had no perceptible goal
or result (e.g., "a fish swims in the basin [circular movement J "). The
three remaining "actions," which consisted merely of cries of differing types or duration supposedly uttered by various toys, can be disre garded for our purposes.
of the six goal-0.irected actions, some were durative and others
were not. While the French passe compose was used more frequently for these six than for the two goalless actions, there was a significant
difference (p < .01) between durative and nondurative actions, the
former having a much higher probability of being marked with a nonpast (= nonpunctual) verb. The authors concluded that "the dis· tinction between perfective and imperfective events seems to be of more importance than the temporal relation between action and the moment of enunciation. Imperfective actions are almost never ex pressed by past tenses, and for perfective actions the use of presents
is the more frequent the greater the probability of taking into account the unaccomplished part of the action. This probability is partly determined by duration, frequence, [sic] , and maybe other objective features we have not investigated."
ACQUISITION 167
In terms of the present study, Bronckart and Sinclair have dearly shown that the PNPD overrides the past-nonpast distinction until at least the age of six. However, the situation in French acquisi tion may be even more creole-like than the authors suggest.
First, they fail to mention the possibility that even when their subjects seem to be marking +past, they are in fuct marking +punctual. French-speaking children, like all other children, start out using the bare stem of the verb for every kind of reference, past or nonpast, punctual or nonpunctual, realis or irrealis. Then, at an age when devel opmental studies suggest that they have only the vaguest idea of past time, they encounter a form (the passe compose) which has exclusively punctual reference. Note that, semantically, the categories of past and punctual overlap. While all pasts need not be punctuals, all punct uals must be pasts-if they were not, they would still be happening, and if they were still happening now, they would be nonpunctual by defini tion. Which is likelier-that they would interpret passe compose in terms of a distinction that they barely yet grasped (past-nonpast), or that they would interpret it in terms of a distinction which would be apparent to them from their own direct observation of actions and events (punctual-nonpunctual) ?
Second, there are a number of facts about the Bronckart and Sinclair data that the authors themselves either skim over or ignore altogether. In order to understand the significance of these facts, we shall have to re-examine their study rather minutely.
Let us begin by describing the six goal-oriented actions used in the study and then coding them in terms of type of action, duration, and iteration (where applicable). The actions (Bronckart and Sinclair's 1-6) are.as follows:
/16/ A truck slowly pushes car toward a garage.
/17/ A car hits a marble which very rapidly rolls into a pocket.
/18/ The farmer junips over ten fences and reaches the farm.
/19/ The farmer's wife jumps in one big jump over ten fences and reaches the farm.
168 ROOTS OF
LANGUAGE
/20/ The
cow
jumps
over
five
fences
and
does
not
reach
the
stable. Age
Group /21/ The
horse
jumps
over
one
fence
and
does
not
reach
the
stable. Rank 3:7 4:7 5:6 6:6
ACQUISITION 169
The authors
present (their
Figure 1)
a graph
which shows
the percentages of
passe
compose
used to
describe each
of the
different actions by
members of five
age groups,
average ages
of each
group being as
follows: 1,
3:7; 2,
4:7;
3, 5:6;
4, 6:6;
5, 7:8.
Like all
the
e e e
4 J-2 P-1 e
Sentences
/19/
and
/21/
are
single
jumping
movements
which
take
two
seconds
and
one
second,
respectively,
so
we
will
call
them
J-2
and
J-1; 1 P-1
P-1
J-1 J-1 /18/
and
/
20/
are
repeated
jumping
movements
which
take
ten
seconds 2 J-2 J-1 J-2 and
five
seconds,
respectively
,
so
we
will
call
them
Jx-10
and
Jx-5; /16/
and
/17
/
are
single
pushing
movements
which
take
ten
seconds 3 J-1 J-2 and
one
second,
respectively,
so
we
will
call
them
P-10
and
P-1.
5 8 P-1 e
acquisition charts
I have
ever seen
, this
one does
not show
a consistent 6
and steadv rise from low to high percentages of correct forms; rather it shows he familiar fever-chart zigzags before coming to rest, at age
0
Table 3.3
7 :8, with fairly uniform percentages of past marking across all action types. In Bronckart and Sinclair's presentation, I think quite unin tentionally, the amount of zigzagging is reduced by showing two different graphs for durative and nondurative events; thus, certain very interesting crossover phenomena, which are not accounted for in the authors'.conclusions, may very easily be overlooked.
In order to display these phenomena, I shall recast Bronckart
and Sinclair's data into the form given in Table 3.3 on the following page. In this table, the six actions, /16{-/ 21/, are ranked for each of the first four age groups. Rank order is based on percentage of past tense assignment; thus, in each column the event at the head of the column is that which is most frequently assigued past marking, while the event at the foot of the column is that to which past marking is least frequently assigned. The nondurative items are circled in the
table for easier reference:
'
Rank orders for past-marking frequency
Table 3.3 presents a picture rather different from that which appears in Bronckart and Sinclair's tables and analyses. At the earliest age, actions seem to be ranked entirely on the basis of their duration, the shortest be.ing the most likely to be past-marked. The authors' Figure 1 shows that the difference between the three highest ranks in the frrst column (i.e., those actions that have a duration of two seconds or less) is less than ten percentage points, while there is a gap of over twenty percentage points between the lowest of the nondurative actions and the highest of the durative actions (Jx-5).
However, this picture gradually and progressively changes, through the next three age groups: jumping actions irrespective of duration tend to rise in rank, while pushing actions sink to the bottom of the table. The final column shows durative and nondurative actions regularly interspersed, but the four jumping actions are now all placed higher than the two pushing actions. The authors' Figure 1shows that the stratification between jumping and pushing is quite sharp: while the
170 ROOTS
OF
LANGUAGE
four jumping actions in the 6:6 column are grouped in a narrow range around the 90 percent past-insertion mark, the higher of the two push ing actions is separated from the lowest jumping action by a span of more than twenty percentage points.
Far from there being an overall rise in past marking of pushing actions, past-marking percentages for these show an absolute decline between ages 4:7 and 6:6, at the same time as past-marking percentages for jumping actions are rising fairly steadily. It stretches the imagina tion to suppose that children between these ages begin to perceive pushing actions as LESS past and jumping actions as MORE past; yet if we really believe that past tense is all that the children are ac quiring, we have no alternative but to believe in improbabilities such as this.
Bronckart and Sinclair note some of the fluctuations mentioned here, but attempt to account for only one of them , and that, perhaps, the least significant: the drop in rank for J-2 (their "event 4") be tween ages 3:7 and 4:7. The explanation they offer is that "this action took objectively more time (2 sec.) than the others (1 sec.)." By "the others" the authors mean, presumably, J-1 and P-1, but they are a little disingenuous here because they fail to note that the past-marking rate for J-2 ALSO FALLS BELOW THAT FOR Jx-Swhich takes more than twice as much time as J-2! Moreover, the rate for J-2 is only a point or two higher than that for Jx-10, which is five times longer! Relative length of time, therefore, cannot be the factor involved.
Let us see if we can really determine what underlies the phe
nomena illustrated in Table 3.3. From the first column, it would appear that children in the lowest age group do indeed discriminate between events on the basis of pure length. However, as they grow older, the criterion of durativity is replaced by another which is also related to the PNPD.
For the punctual-nonpunctual opposition must also be marked in the semantic features of individual verbs. That is to say, some verbs are inherently punctual, while others are inherently nonpunctual. lf you hit something for five minui;es, it must be that you hit it many
ACQUISITION 171
times; similarly, if you jump for five minutes, you must jump many times; both hit and jump express inherently punctual actions. But on the other hand, if you push something for five minutes you do not ncessaril push it more than once, and if something oils for five mmutes, It des not necessarily roll more than once; both push and roll express mherently nonpunctual actions (although of course a compound verb like roll over is inherently punctual).
. .fo other words, although the PNPD is crucial throughout the acqu1smon of past-tense marking, the way in which punctuality and nonpunctuality are interpreted changes as children mature. At f1rst, tey mere! register the relative length of events, and do not ·distinguish either the. mhe'."6nt characteristics of different actions or any difference between iterative and durative events. Note how, in column 1 0f
Table 3.3, the wo Jx events, which are sequences of punctual events,
e grouped with P-10, the only truly durative event. Thus, their JUdgment of what is nonpunctual at age 3:7 accords with the common st ceole ju gment of what is nonpunctual: that is, a merger of the 1terat1ve (habitual) with the durative (progressive).
However, as time goes by, the two Jx events are reinterpreted s squence of events, each one of which, considered individually , 1s bnef and mherently punctual. Thus, iteratives are removed from the nopunctual category (which now contains only duratives) and re asigned to the punctual category. This judgment- merging of iteratives with punctuals-corresponds to the minority creole pattern found in
Jamaican.Creol: and perhaps a few others referred to under the heading of Dev1at10n E m Chapter 2 (p. 78J. It is certainly intriguing to specu
late that at least some of the relatively few real differences in creoles c?uld result from their having been "finalized," so to speak, at slightly
different age levels by the inventing generation-but of course we can only speculate at this stage.
. What is of more immediate interest is the insight that we can denve, from the process described above, into the wav in which a bio program would evolve. Some scenarios for Chomsky innatism seem to suggest that every neonate already has a full Aspects grammar curled
172 ROOTS OF LANGUAGE
up in Broca's region. This literalistic reading of "innate" has no place in a bioprogram theory. A true bioprogram would grow, develop, and change just as the physical organism that houses it grows, develops, and changes. Increases in the child's cognitive abilities (which o course also form part of the bioprogram in its widest sense) would mteract with the linguistic component and progressively modify it.
For the French-speaking child, the shift in the nature of the
nonpunctual category would have the effect of moving ma.re events into the punctual category, thus making more events available for past marking. It would, in other words, help the child in his trai:sfer from predominantly punctual marking to predominantly past markmg although whether this result issues from the hand of a beneficent providence, or is merely an accidental bonus, it is far too early to tell.
The suggestion that children may have been marking punctality when they seemed to have been marking pastness may still see.m b12arre to some readers. Let us, therefore, see how well it stands up m hght of another well-known study of tense acquisition-that of Antinucci and
Miller (1976).
Antinucci and Miller found that the earliest tense form used by
their sample of Italian-speaking children was the past participle. At first this always agreed in number and gender with the sentential object, suggesting that the children regarded the participles as adjectives rather than verbs. Then, around age two, they dropped the agreement rule and began to use the participles in ways suggesting that they now perceived them as true past-tense verbs (the usual past tense in Italian consists of auxiliary plus participle, ho venuto 'I came', but the children almost always omitted the auxiliary).
However, the verbs which children used in this way appeared
to be somewhat restricted in number. The authors divided verbs into three classes: activity verbs (where the action has no end result) , stative verbs, and change-of-state verbs (such as close, fall, give, et':'.) which describe actions as a result of which "an object changes 1ts state." They found that with vry few exceptions, children's past
ACQUISITION 173
forms were
found with
verbs of
the last
class only,
and they
concluded that the
child could
only assign
past tense
to an
action when
some thing presently
in his
physical environment-a
toy that
had been
broken, some
milk that
had been
spilled-remained behind
as
a
concrete result of
that action.
Now,
it
happens
to
be
the
case
that
change-of-state
verbs
are
all
inherently
punctual;
the
rare,
apparent
exceptions
are
often
due
to
purely
technological
developments,
as
in
the
abandoned
astronaut
fell
toward
the
planet
for
several
hours.
But
even
sentences
like
that
can
be
. seen to be underlyingly punctual if we apply another test for inherent punctuality: the question, "If you stop halfway through Ving, have you Ved?" Thus, if you stop halfway through closing, you have not closed, and if you stop halfway through giving, you have not given; similarly, if the abandoned astronaut stopped halfway through falling, he would not have fallen, although he migh t have lost altitude. But with activity verbs, which are inherently nonpunct ual, the converse applies: if you stop halfway through playing, you have played, if you stop half
way throirgh writing, you have written, and so on. If, as the Bronckart
and Sinclair study suggests; the more an action is regarded as punctual,
the more likely it is to be given past-tense marking, then the verbs in
ntinucci and Miller's change-of-state list may be given past marking bei:ause .they are. punctual, rather than for the reason the authors suggest:
.It is true. that in the Bronckart and Sinclair study the first cri terion for the PNPD was raw duration, and that inherent characteristics
of .verbs didnot become dominant until an age long past that of the
Antinucd and Miller subjects. However, the Bronckart and Sinclair data are ·drawn from experiments, whereas the Antinucci and Miller data ate drawn from naturalistic observation; moreover, Bronckart and inclair do not include any change-of-state verbs in their study. The .two studies are therefore not comparable at the fine-grained level 6f,."Just how do children interpret punct uality at age X?"; they do, ho\Ver, seem to be in agreement that some kind of PNPD is involved.
There are other clues in Antinucci and Miller's study which
174 ROOTS
OF
LANGUAGE
suggest that a punct ual analysis may account for the facts better than a change-of-state one. Early in their third year, Italian children gener ally acquire a second Italian past tense, the imperfect. This is used with activity verbs, but is not extended to change-of-state verbs, which continue to be past-marked with participial forms (with or without auxiliary):
/22/ (Antinucci and Miller's 82)
Mamma e andato (participial) al parco e io stavo (imperfect)
a casa
'Mommy went to the park and I stayed home'
/23/ (Antinucci and Miller's 90)
Li ha messi (participial) nel saco e dopo gli altri bambini piange· vano (imperfect)
'He put them in a sack and then the other children cried'
In other words, imperfects and participials are in complementary distribution, the first being used for punctual verbs, the second for nonpunctual ones. Note that this does not reflect anything in Italian grammar; all Italian verbs, whether punctual or nonpunctual, activity or change-of-state verbs, have both perfective and imperfective past tenses. ,
Antinucci and Miller's explanation for this state of affairs is far from satisfactory. They note that the imperfect appears first during story-telling, and suggest that the child uses it to distinguish "pretend" from real events. But if this were really the case, we would expect use of the imperfect to be extended to all types of verbs, including change of-state verbs; for surely change-of-state (or punct ual) verbs can be used to describe imaginary events as easily as activity (or nonpunctual) verbs. Moreover, in the examples that Antinucci and Miller them selves cite, such as /22/ and /23/ above, the events of staying and crying, rendered by the imperfect, are no more (or less) "pretend" events than the events of going and putting, which are rendered by the participial form. ,
ACQUISITION 175
It is therefore highly possible that the connection observed by the athors bet"'.'ee "pretend" evnts and the imperfect is merely a part1 .and comc1den tal one. It 1s hard to tell, since they present no stat1st1cal data that would serve to quantify the distribution of participial and imperfective forms in realis and irrealis contexts. And if their hypothesis is falsified even by the few sentences they themselves choose to cite, and if both tenses are past-reference in adult speech, then there is nothing but the PNPD to prevent children from general izing the more regular, imperfect form to change-of-state verbs just as English children generalize -ed to irregular pasts. '
Inded, hw is it that English children generalize in this way when Italian children do not? If everyone has the same bioprogram, how com.e everyone doesn't learn the same way? Let us explore this problem 1Il some depth, for by so doing we will not only answer these and other questions, but we will also better understand how the same
bioprogram can yield superficially different results when it interacts with two languages that differ in structure.
First, let us dispose of a possible objection. It might be argued tat the two processes- Irian-speaking children learning first parti ciples, then llnperfects; English-speaking children learning first irregular, then regular pasts-are not really commensurate. So they are not, from an adult point of view. But the child does not have an adult point of view, and for the child they must be completely commen surate. The adult knows that Italian has two tense forms with different meanings, whereas English has only a single form, expressed in diverse ways. But there is no way a child could know this unless he were born with a comparative grammar of Inda-European in his head, as well as Aspects. Remember, the children we are talking about are under three. Not only can they not have the slightest idea what the mat ure tense system of their languages will eventually look like, but even on the most favorable accounts, they can have only the vaguest notion of
what past means, and by some accounts, they can have no notion at all.
176 ROOTS
OF
LANGUAGE
What must really happen is something like the following. Around age two, the child who happens to be learning Italian becomes aware of a set of rather irregular forms, which are past-reference forms in adult grammar (the Italian participles), whereas the child who happens to be learning English also becomes aware of a set of rather irregular forms, which are also past-reference forms in adult speech (the English "strong" past tenses). Shortly afterward, the child learning Italian encounters a set of quite regular forms, once again past-reference forms in adult speech (the Italian imperfective), while, around the same time, the child learning English also encounters a set of regular forms that are past-reference forms in adult speech (the English "weak" past tenses).
Up until
this point, the
experiences of
the two
children have been
, from
their point
of view,
identical. I
defy anyone
to explain how
those experiences
could be
differently interpreted
by the
two children-except in
a single
respect, which
we shall
deal with
shortly. From
the child's
point of
view, in
both cases
he has
begun by
finding some
irregular fors
that mean
past (from
the traditional
perspective) or
punctual (from
the perspective
of this
volume), and
he has
gone on to find
some regular
forms that
also mean
past (from
the traditional
perspective).
But now, the Italian learner and the English learner part com pany. The Italian learner keeps the two sets of forms, the regular and the irregular, completely separate, applying one set to one class of verbs and the other to another. The English learner, on the contrary, proceeds to generalize the regular set to the irregular set, applying "weak" tense endings to "strong" verbs in defiance of adult grammar rules. Why ? Why doesn't the Italian learner make a similar generaliza tion? Or, to put it differently, why doesn't the English learner make the same kind of distinction as the Italian learner, maintaining the irregular forms (like came, went, bought, sold, gave, broke-all good changes-ofstate, note) for punctual verbs, and saving the -ed affix for activity verbs?
To understand the answer, we have to get used to looking at the
\
ACQUISITION 177
acquisition process in a way it has not been looked at hitherto-even though e.verything w.e know about language points to that way as the mst logical and fr1tful. Als, the "order of acquisition" gambit set child language studies back fifteen years by concentrating exclusively on the acquisition of isolated features. Small wonder if, as we have seen, the sterility of this approach sent acquisitionists gamboling off across the meadows of pragmatics, cognition, "motherese," etc., which were not much more irrelevant to the central problem of syntax acquisition, but a good ?eal less dull. For what both groups forgot was that lauage IS a tight system composed of even tighter sub systems. Children do not learn individual morphemes in isolation from
one another; they build up subsystems and at the same time integrate those subsystems into an overall system.
The situation was not helped any by the primitive state of the art in TMA studies, in spite of (I would prefer to say, because of) wo'.k in the field from Reichenbach (1947) to Comrie (1976) and Wo1setschlaeger (1977). We shall return to this issue in Chapter 4; for. the .moment, suffice it to say that an approach like Comrie's,
-;h1ch tries to extract some kind of Platonic core meaning from terms like "perfective" and "imperfective," totally ignores the fact that the units of grammatical subsystems cannot be defined independently of those systems-that, in consequence, what "perfective" and "im perfec.tive" mean, .in any subsystem where such labels are applicable,
IS entirely determmed by how many other units that subsystem has and what the other units mean.
Once this viewpoint is established, we can proceed to look at the .u:quisition of TMA systems AS SYSTEMS, bearing in mind all the while the injunction of the bioprogram; "Make sure that punctuals and nonpuncts are adequately differentiated." We may then repre sent the acqu1Sltlon process for English and Italian learners as in Figure
3.1 on the following page:
178 ROOTS OF LANGUAGE
Time line (very approx.)
1:6 ----------------2:6
-ing (NP)
ACQUISITION 179
that the scope of this "present tense" differs in English and Italian; in English it includes habitual and iterative reference only, whereas in Italian it includes progressive and durative reference also. The child,
·needless to say, cannot foresee these facts, but they exert a profound influence on the acquisition process, as the following paragraphs will show.
The question of what determines the order in which new forms
English learner
base<
base
<irr. past (P)
base
reg. past
base
are acquired is too complex to be explored fully here.6 However, it seems likely that the difference between Italian and English present tenses determines the first addition to the system. English has a dis tinct (and frequent) form for present progressives; Italian has not. Therefore, the first new term that English learners add is a nonpunctual one. But since there is no similar form in Italian, the first new form that Italian learners add is a past form-the participle-which they interpret as a punctual one.
The second new form acquired by English learners is the ir
Italian learner
base <P"'part. (P)
base
1'1gure 3.1 .
Comparative TMA acquisition (Italian versus Enghsh)
Both English and Italian learners begin with a single undiffe
regular past, which they interpret as marking punctuality. They are therefore now able to mark both sides of the PNPD. But shortly after ward they become aware of a third form-regular past -ed. Since they already have markers for punctual and nonpunctual, they cannot ac commodate this .new form by assigning to it its own semantic scope; they therefore assume they were wrong in choosing irregular past as a punctual marker, and proceed to extend -ed to those past punc tuals which had previously been allotted irregular forms.
However, the second new form acquired by Italian learners
is the imperfect. This, like the past participle, is used for past reference by adults, and if Italian learners were really using participles to mark past reference, they would surely generalize the imperfect form to
entiated base form which at . first has to cover all intende.d forms TMA re£erence ··(m· fact' the Italian base form is reall.y a s.eries of. for differentiated for person, but this and similar details will be ignor
here for the sake of clarity of presentation). As ne:V- .forms are. add
verbs of all types, just as English learners generalize -ed-Jor, as noted
above (p. 176), the Italian participial/imperfect opposition and the
English irregular/regular past opposition must look formally identi
cal to the child learner. The reason why they do not do this can stem only from the unique difference between the situations of the two
the
.
semantic
scope of this base form contra.cts until it evolves mto t
sets of learners: English learners have already marked both sides of
adult,
so-called
"present
tense"
in
both
languages.
Note, oweve
h
180 ROOTS OF LANGUAGE
the PNPD, while Italian learners have marked only one side. For them, nonpunctuals are yet to be marked, so instead of generalizing the imperfect, they seize on it as their nonpunctual marker and keep it carefully separate from their marker of punctuality , the participial form.
Note that without the bioprogram the differences in behavior between Italian and English learners are quite inexplicable. In virtually identical circumstances, the English learner over-generalizes, while the Italian learner under-generalizes. However, once we see that English and Italian learners are equipped with an identical program, but still satisfying the requirements of that program in a different order-an order determined by the interaction of the bioprogram with two different languages-such differences are not merely explicable, but follow inevitably from the theory presented here.
Now we can better understand what the child of a first creole generation does. When that child is around 18 to 21 months old, his TMA "system" and the TMA "system" of his parents' pidgin exactly coincide; both consist of the "universal base" shown at the left-hand side of Figure 3.1. The only difference between the child's trying to learn a pidgin and the child's trying to learn French or Italian is that the latter will be offered a variety of verb forms which he can then interpret according to the specifications of his bioprogram, while the former will not be offered anything new in the way of forms. The creole child therefore decides to mark the nonpunctual side of the opposition.
Two questions may be asked here: why does the creole child decide, apparently without exception, to mark nonpunctuals rather than punctuals, and why does he not mark both terms of the opposi tion, as I have claimed that both English and Italian children do?
I think that nonpunctuals rather than punctuals are marked because, from a pragmatic viewpoint, nonpunctuals represent the marked case in a Jakobsonian sense: in the real world, more actions are punctual than nonpunctual; punctual actions constitute the back-
'
ACQUISITION 181
ground against which nonpunctual actions stand out. Regarding the second question, we should rather ask, why do noncreole children mark both terms? The answer to that clearly is because noncreole children receive, if anything, too great a variety of forms-greater, certainly, than any two-year-old can incorporate into a coherent system. The child feels obliged to assign some kind of significance to terms with which he is constantly bombarded, so he assumes that in the language confronting him both sides of the PNPD are formally marked.
But, of course, both sides of an opposition do not have to be formally marked-it serves to distinguish them if you formally mark one term and zero-mark the other. Considerations of parsimony alone would indicate such a choice, if the opportunity presents itself (and for the creole child, it does). It is quite enough trouble for the creole child
to select, from the pidgin, one content-word (like HPE locative stei)
to mark one term of the opposition, without having to search out another to mark the other. In both cases, albeit by differen t means, the demands of the bioprogram are satisfied.
I have little doubt that when acquisitionists begin to study TMA. acquisition from a dynamic, systems-oriented standpoint, and with.the tools of variation analysis already available from decreolization studies, many more of the effects of the bioprogram will become visible. For the present, we must leave that area and survey rather more briefly some others in which resemblances between creoles and acqui sitional stages are to be found. We shall look at just four areas: comple mnt Ss, questions, negatives, and causatives.
A rec.et overview of complex sentence acquisition (Bowerman 1979) draws heavily on Brown (1973) and Limber (1973), which
.•.··•. app< ar to. be the major, if not the only, sources in this area. If true,
surprising, since Brown devotes less than a page (p. 21) to sen tential complemen ts, and Umber's only slightly longer (six. -page) treatment leaves many crucial questions unasked. However, much of
is said by these scholars is highly suggestive.
182 ROOTS OF LANGUAGE
Brown cites four examples only of complement Ss produced by children:
/24/ I hope I don't hurt it.
/25/ I think it's the wrong way.
/26/ I mean that's a D.
/27/ You think I can do it?
Brown comments that "the embedded sentence appears exactly as it would if it stood alone as an independent simple sentence."He observes that there are other types of complement S of which this is not true, such as:
/28/ It annoys the neighbors for John to play the bugle.
He does not state whether or not the children in his sample produced sentences like /28/, but the implication is that they did not. He does observe, however, that "there is also a complementizer that" which can occur in sentences like /24/-/27 /; but "the children did not use it.n
Limber's data are more problematic in that it is not always clear from his treatment whether a given example is an actual child utterance or one presented for heuristic purposes. Thus, although Limber states that "marked infinitive" is acquired early, this is not clearly the case from the example given: I want to go. If, as seems probable, this is just an orthographic regularization of the actual utterance, I wanna go (a likelihood increased by the fact that Limber himself includes a similar form, hafta, in his Table 1), then it is not at all clear from the viewpoint of what the child (as opposed to the adult) knows that the child has acquired marked infmitives. Consider the following sentences, which few children can have failed to hear or failed to produce themselves:
/29/ I wanna cookie (unambiguous noun).
\
ACQUISITION 183
130/
I
wanna drink
(ambiguous between
noun and
verb).
/31/ l wanna go (unambiguous verb).
Faced with such data, the most reasonable conclusion on the part of the child would be that the canonical form of the verb was wanna rather than want-or that, at the very least, hafta, liketa, wanna should be. entered in the lexicon as variant (perhaps phonologically condi tioned) forms of the verb stems concerned. Such, certainly, is the assumption made by Brown (1973:54) when establishing rules for the alculation of mean length of utterance: "gonna, wanna, hafta . . . [were]counted as single morphemes rather than as going to or want to because evidence is that they function so for the children."
The following series of examples represents, with one exception, all the sentential complement forms cited by Limber which we can assume to be examples of actual child speech:
/32/ lwant mommy do it.
·/33/ I don't want you read that book.
/34/ Watch me draw circles.
/35/ I see you sit down.
/36/ Lookit a boy play ball.
If we look at these five examples together with the four cited by Brown (and these, strange to say, seem to be virtually the only coniplement-S constructions cited in the literature), we will note first that not one of them has an overt complementizer, and second,
that with the exception of /34/ the complements could stand on their own as independent simple sentences. Moreover, since me as subject
has. been widely reported for black children, it is by no means certain that for the speaker of /34/, me draw circles would be ungrammatical; and even if it were, the analogy with watch me, mommy!-an utterance surely developmentally prior to /34/-may be what is operative ln this case.
It is true that we cannot point to the same kind of evidence
184 ROOTS OF LANGUAGE
we used in Chapter 2, when the same question of finite versus non finite analysis was at issue; we cannot point to t,he presence of markers of tense or aspect in the embedded sentence. But it would be illegiti mate to expect such evidence, since at the ages from which Limber's
ACQUISITION 185
established and that there is no evidence, as there seems not to be, for any VP constituent):
examples are taken (1 :6 to 3:0), the vast majority of children's verb forms consist of unmarked stems anyway.
The only example of Limber's which was 11ot cited above is:
/39/ S -+ NP V
( {NSP })
/37I I all done eating.
This might at first seem like a clear case of a nonf"mite complement S. But Limber himself explicitly observes that in his recordings there is no trace of "a variety of -ing complements; for example, I like eating lollipops in contrast to the very common I like to eat lollipops" (which, as already suggested, is more probably a case of a quasi-modal liketa). He further comments that nonf"mite ing forms (as distinct from the "finite -ing" discussed in a previous section) occurred only in sentences like /37 /, i.e., "with finish or all done." Although Limber himself does not explicitly draw it, it would seem legitimate to draw the conclusion that finish and all done are interpreted by the child either as quasi modals followed by "fmite -ing" or as main verbs followed by NP. Either way, /37/ would not be relevant to the present discussion.
Limber goes on to "informally summarize" the major develop ments in complex sentences prior to age three in the following manner: "An N-V-N sequence is the common simple sentence .. . . [children] expand (or substitute) an N-V-N sequence for certain noun phrases .. .
[butJ do not apply syntactic operations to any subject NPs." Brown
(1973:21) also observed that sentences of the type of /38/ below did not occur in child speech:
/38/ That John called early annoyed Bill.
Stated more formally , Limber's study would suggest that children have only the following major PS rule (assuming that Aux is not yet
\
Similarities between the foregoing account of complement Ss in child speech by Limber and Brown and the account of complement Ss in creoles given in Chapter 2 are quite striking. They include:
The absence of embedded sentences in subject position.
The absence of complementizers.
3) The identity of form between embedded and nonembedded sentences.
4) The absence of nonfinite and subjectless embeddings.
In addition, we may note the similarity of /39/ to the major creole PS rule /236/, Chapter 2, hypothesized on quite independent grounds for all early-stage creoles, and repeated here for convenience as /40/:
/40/ S -+ NP Aux V (NP) (S)
Rule /40/ is merely a slightly more sophisticated version of /39/, as would befit its more mature users, differing only in that it admits an established Aux: and allows for object NP as well as complement S in the same sentence, instead of only admitting these as alternatives.
Of the similarities listed, the first three are self-explanatory, but perhaps a word should be said about the fourth, which relates to the absence from child speech of sentences like I like eating lolli pops and from creoles of sentences like /41/ or /42/:
/41/ GC.: *mi hia a sing
'l heard singing'
186 ROOTS
OF LANGUAGE
/42/ GC: *mi laik a sing
'I like singing'
(Sentences
whose
complements
have
overt
subjects,
such
as
mi
hia
ia
sing
'I
heard
him
singing',
are
of
course
in
another
class
entirely.)
In
fact,
more
is
involved
here
than
there
is
space
to
discuss/42/
involves
equi-deletion
while
/41/
involves
deletion
of
an
unspecified
subject,
so
the
reasons
for
their
ungrammaticality
cannot
be
the
samebut
I
would
like
to
suggest
a
reason
why
both
creoles
and
children
should
reject
sentences
on
the
model
of
J
like
doing
X.
If children learned language primarily on the basis of analogy, the absence of such sentences would be mysterious. The child would observe some specific questions and answers:
{43{ What are you eating? Cookies.
/44/
What
are
you
playing
with?
My
ball.
Answers to such questions fit well into the frame, I like . . .:
/45/ I like cookies.
/46{ I like my ball.
Once the child had acquired "finite -ing," he would be able to answer slightly less explicit questions with -ing forms:
/47/ What are you doing? Eating cookies.
/48/ What are you doing? Playing ball.
By
analogy
with
/45/,
/46/,
these
ought
to
yield:
/49/ I like eating cookies.
/ 50/ I like playing ball.
Of course, children do not;,, learn primarily by analogy; analogical
ACQUISITION 187
forms may crop up from time to time, but not when (as here) they would conflict with important structural aspects of the grammar. For eating cookies in /47/ is not the same as eating cookies in /49/. In /47 /, it expresses a particular nonpunctual action in realis time; in /49/, it expresses the abstract concept of an action, not necessarily either punctual or nonpunctual, in irrealis time. The superficial identity of the forms involved is an illusory one, and the child, for all the little he is supposed to know of language, is not fooled by it. For hoth child and creole, nonpunctual means nonpunctual, nothing more, and be cause of the form-meaning biuniq ueness that characterizes both child speech and creoles, the form chosen to mark nonpunctual cannot be assigned any other function.
We mayjustifiably conclude, then, that the mechanisms of child
language
and
creoles
for
incorporating
sentences
within
sentences
are
highly
similar,
with
one
exception:
children
show
no
evidence
of
verb
serialization
{at
le'ast
in
existing
accounts;
I
would
not
rule
out
the
possibility
that
it
might
turn
up
if
people
started
looking
for
it).
But
then,.
the
reasons
why
child
language
doesn't
have
verb
serialization
are
probably
the
reasons
why
some
creoles
don't
have
it:
because
prepositions
are.
available
it1
the
input,
and
therefore
serialization
is
not
needed
to
differentiate
case
roles.
Let us nowturn to questions. Children acquire questions early
J.
.•..
>
eettainly
by
the
two-word
stage,
and
probably
earlier
even
than
that.
acqtdsition
of
question
forms
was
first
studied
intensively
by
Klima
and Bellugi .(1966), and although some subsequent observers have found more ·variation in question development than these authors recognized, their principal findings have not been seriously challenged.
Among English learners, yes-no questions are at frrst distin gi;1shed from statements only by a rising intonation contour, and WH questions onlyhy a . sentence-initial WR-word; in neither type is there 9£ Subject-Aux inversion. This state of affairs changes only
slo.wl1r. Sent.en.ces grow longer and more complex, all the question
W'ordls but yes-no questions retain the form of /51/ and
188 ROOTS OF LANGUAGE ACQUISITION 189
/51/ This can't write a flower?
/52/ You can't fix it?
At a later stage, when inversion begins to appear in yes-no questions, · it is still absent from WH-questions:
/53/ Why he don't know how to pretend?
/54/ Where the other Joe will drive?
This last stage is all the more puzzling because children who remain in it are often at the same time producing sentences which indicate·; mastery of rules seemingly more complex than those required for e correctly forming English WH-sentences, such as the following:
/55/ You have two things that turn around (relativization ).
/56/ I told you I know how to put the train together (double comple ment embedding plus embedded nonfinite WR-clause).
/57 / Let's go upstairs and take it from him because it's mine (co- · ordination and subordinate-clause causative construction ).
Why do children at this level of development persist in using structures' so different from the many well-formed questions which they must . have heard?
Clark and Clark (1977:354) suggest that "WH-questions may be more difficult because they require two rearrangements: movement. of the WH-word from where it would have been to initial position ·
fhe f,'rocess, such as you doing what? or what you doing what? in place Of the.>expected what you doing?;7 with a candor as rare as it is comineridable, they observe that such errors have not as yet been repotted anc! that it will constitute counterevidence to their claims if those errors do not in fact occur. If indeed there is no evidence
t()
sl!pport
the
two-rearrangement
argument,
the
only
reason
for
s1.lppoing•that
.WE-questions
are
psychologically
complex
is
that
they
0
•§'taJie. lqnger to acquire. In other words, the whole explanation becomes
--.,,:,__:: "C"lt'·CU1Jl·· i
\ ,' 11< An alternative explanation is suggested by Ruth Clark, who
claims that uninverted WR-questions are modeled on the embedded
·.ci' ;luses produced by mothers and other caregivers (Clark 1977).
; f\o \example; the child who asks where Teddy? may often be answered
Jiy J c(O.h.'t krt()UJ . WHERE TEDDY IS. Clark argues that children are
su ·fo litp with special attention to the answers to their own ques S·eiorsJ.in thi '-\'ay, they acquire the uninverted structures which they
, slll)sqtiently use to form questions of their own. Clark's explanation is irnplausible on several grounds.
< c'i i•first; the productive use of analogy it entails has little support ih;'aquismon studies generally, and we have just noted one specific c t•ro11f111ite -ing" ) where the predictions it makes are not in fact
;iffllled. '.Second, if there is anything children can do with language,
•dt:!>t() tellthe difference between a question and a statement; accord
i{ltt!fJo Halliday (1975), they learn to do this productively, by applying
;,,fpr()ptUtte intonation contours to some of their earliest one-word
,,,,,,,5,, ,',n '
'· tee,an<::es, ari:mnd the age of fifteen months. In the two years or so
the sentence and inversion of the subject and auxiliary verb" (emphas'
1cnl1'Y elapse.between that time and their fm'
al mastery of English
added).
This
claim
assumes
(rather
uncharacteristically
for
these
au-.
thors)
that
children
actually
carry
out,
in
the
processing
of
sentences,.
the
operations
which
a
generative
grammar
of
English
would
apply
to
derive
WH-questions.
Erreich
et
al.
(1980),
writing
from
an
orthodox
generative
standpoint,
make
the
same
assumption.
However,
the
latter.
note
that
if
children
do
really
derive
WR-questions
in
this
way,
one
would
expect
to
find
errors
reslting
from
incomplete
application
of
•• ;i(je);tins; they must receive countless well-formed tokens of the ' 51'.\Y:•'!NChsince the consequences of inattention may in some
. 9a5s . acutely dysfunctional for them-they must listen as acutely
as;·t:. Yf;do j;o answers to their own questions. It is well known that
· ·• · !'l<try, wherever possible, to maintain "one form, one function" rety iteeth of "natural" languages which insist on having two for•one function and two functions for one form. In the face of
190 ROOTS
OF
LANGUAGE
all of this, why should children take a form that clearly belongs in answers and use it to make questions?
If we assume a language bioprogram, however, a much more reasonable explanation emerges. The bioprogram would enjoin just that biuniqueness in form-function and form-meaning relationships which children strive for and which creoles, with a large measure of success, attain. In this, it merely follows the pattern of genetic programs in general, which do not prescribe sets of alternative routines, but leave open the possibility of adapting given routines for other purposes.
One resource in the bioprogram is constituent movement. We will not directly consider movement rules in this chapter, although we considered them in the first two, simply because not enough work has been done on the acquisition of movement rules for any valid comparisons to be drawn. But it would appear from creoles that inove ment has, as the overall model would suggest, only one function expressing shifts from the expected pattern of focus and presupposi tion. Certainly no creole rule that I know of moves any constituent for any other reason than this.
English, therefore, goes contrary to the bioprogram when it uses a movement rule-subject-aux inversion-to distinguish between ques tions and statements. The child, therefore, either fails to hear correctly or simply ignores the sentences that depart so radically from his expec tations. Eventually (perhaps as a result of misunderstandings; it would be interesting to have some "caregiver interaction" data on this) the child observes that subject-aux inversion is required in yes-no questions. Two factors could reasonably be expected to delay the generalization of this rule to WH-questions. First, WH-questions are unambiguously marked by the initial WH-word, so that misunderstanding is corre spondingly less likely to occur. Second, the fact that WH-questions are already formally distinguishable from statements could well deter the child from applying what, to him, would be a quite redundant rule-why mark a question as a question twice over?
Finally, of course, he has to capitulate; the child learning a creole does not. The yes-no questions of children in Klima and Bellugi's
'
ACQUISITION 191
second stage and the WH-questions of children in their third stage are identical with the yes-no and WH-questions cited in Chapter 2.
Let us turn to negation where, again, the findings· of Klima and Bellugi ( 1966) have hardly been superseded (except, again, that they may not have paid enough attention to individual differences). At the earliest stage of negation, a negative morpheme- occasionally not, most often no-is placed at the beginning or end of the utterance. These forms persist into the second stage, but here, one or two spe cialized negative forms, such as don't or can't, are also acquired. Since cannot and do not never appear at this stage, we can conclude that for the child, can't and don't constitute monomorphemic utterances. Also these forms seem to be more restricted in distribution than they are in adult language; don't seems to be confined (in Klima and Bellugi's examples, at least ) to stative verbs and imperatives.
Can't and don't are, presumably, superimposed on the bio program by sheer force of parental repetition; I know of no statistics on the subject , but casual observation alone suggests that these must be among the most frequent words addressed to small children-perhaps to creole speakers too; for I cannot resist interrupting this account to describe two striking similarities between acquisition and, this time, decreolization.
It may seem illogical at first to compare acquisition with de creolization in a study whose main thrust is the comparison of acquisi tion and creolization; but regarding later stages of acquisition, such comparisons are apt and pertinent. The position of the bioprogram activating child vis-a-vis the target-language-enforcing adult is highly comparable to the position of the creole speaker vis-a-vis the super strate speaker. Both adult and superstrate speaker believe that both child and creole speaker are speaking merely a "broken" form of their own "proper" language. Both child and creole speaker are eventually forced to modify their natural behavior by the bombardment from above.8 With regard to changes in negative forms, the results seem to be identical. Both basilectal GC and basilectal HCE order Neg
192 ROOTS OF LANGUAGE
before Aux in surface structure; in the decreolization of both languages, the thin end of the wedge of English negative placement (i.e., in surface structure as the second member of Aux) consists of adoption of the negative form of can (GC kyaan, HCE k aenat ) to replace, respectively, GC na kyan, HCE no k aen. Kyaan and kaenat are both perceived and treated as monomorphemic units. In GC, kyaan is first acquired, and doon (the equivalent of don't ) is acquired second and some time later in the decreolization process; in HCE, kaenat and don are acquired around the same time. In GC, exactly as in child language, doon is initially applied to statives, imperatives, and little else (see Bickerton [197S:Table 3.9] , where these two types account for 84 percent of the output of early doon users); comparable figures are, unfortunately, unavailable for HCE.
We return now to the normal evolution of child negatives. Around the time that don't and can't make their first appearance, there also appear sentences such as the following:
/58/ That no fish school.
/59/ He no bite you.
/60/ I no want envelope.
These sentences find exact parallels not in decreolization, but in the classic form of creole negative sentences. As in creoles, the negative morpheme is identical with the morpheme of denial. As in creoles, the negative morpheme is inserted directly after the subject, before any verbal or auxiliary element, rather than sentence-externally (as in the first phase of child negation) or after a first auxiliary or verbal constituent (as in English). This second similarity is maintained even after no begins to be replaced by not:
/61/ He not taking the walls down.
/62/ Ask me if I not made mistake.
\
ACQUISITION 193
ln part,
at least,
these developments
are natural,
perhaps inevit able.
At the
two-word stage
there is
nowhere the
child could
put a negative
except
sentence-externally.
Moreover, since
no
is
heard as
an isolated unit
with heavy
emphasis, while
not
often
occurs in
contracted forms which
may be
unrecognizable to
the child,
it is
hardly surprising
that no
rather
than not
is
selected for
sentence negation.
It is less clear why negative placement in longer sentences takes the position it does. To judge from the examples cited above, that placement involves post-subject, rather than preverbal, placement inapplicable in /58/ which has no verb--or second position in sentence ruled out by /62/ where a subordinate clause is negated. Yet there is no support for a "post-subject" hypothesis in English. One might claim that the child knows roughly where the negative should go but doesn't yet have any auxiliary to place in front of it, so he ru:rives at post subject placement by default, so to speak. This may sound plausible at first. But note that post-subject placement is arrived at BEFORE the child acquires not-not merely usurps the place staked out by no. Just how would the child know "roughly where the negative goes" in English if that child has not yet succeeded in even IDENTIFYING not? Recognition of the "English position" for Neg-placement depends crucially on the ability to realize that not (all that ever occurs in that position) is the marker of negation. Those who would argue for the "commonsense" explanation of how children acquire negative place ment will have to explain how you can learn what a form means and where it is placed WITHOUT ACTUALLY LEARNING THE FORM ITSELF.
There is empirical evidence, too, to confirm that people can't and don't learn in this way. I have already suggested some ways in which child acquisition is somewhat like decreolization: or, to put it more precisely , the child's actuation of the bioprogram is like creoliza tion, and the child's modification of bioprogram specifications is like decreolization. Now, as I abundantly demonstrated in Bickerton (1975), decreolization proceeds by acquiring new forms fust and new functions later.9 Newly acquired morphemes are at first assigned
194 ROOTS OF LANGUAGE ACQUISITION 195
meanings and functions that already exist in the speaker's grammar; _
._, -,,. ,,. 1.'c>nlci tie argued that sentences like /63/ are nothing more
in other words, these morphemes have to be stripped of the meanings -
,J ·J'l 2 jo•£:
the order in which somebody, nobody, and anybody
and functions
which they
had in
the superstrate
before they
can be
incorporated into the existing creole grammar. Only later, as that grammar itself changes, do they reacquire all or part of their original • superstrate meanings and functions. I know of no counterexamples· to this empirical finding, nor has it been challenged in the literature; - We should therefore be highly skeptical of any claims about child acquisiticn which involve the assumption that meanings· and func, tions can be acquired in the absence of the formal units which act' as bearers of those meanings and functions.
Another
puzzle
concerns
the
slow
spread
of
don't.
If
don't
acquired
at
the
same
time
as
post-subject
no,
how
is
it
that
the
child
does
not
straight
away
adopt
the
hypothesis
that
don't
is
the
"real'
negative
marker,
and
spread
its
use
to
all
environments?
In
fact,
don't_
MUST
be
perceived
simply
as
an
alternative
to
no,
rather
than
do
+
negative,
since
the
child
has
no
independent
do
at
this
stage
or
for
some
time
to
come.
If
a
child
applied
this
hypothesis
just
to
the
exam
ples
/58/-/62/,
he
would
score
two
almost
correct
sentences
out
o
the
five-he
don't
bite
you,
I
don't
want
envelope-as
opposed
to
on!
three
incorrect
ones:
*that
don't
fish
school,
*he
don't
taking
th
walls
down,
*ask
me
if
I
don't
made
mistake.
This
is
better
than
fiv
out
of
five
incorrect,
which
is
what
he
now
has.10
Resemblances to creole structures are not exhausted even wheti the child has fully mastered the negative placement rule. McNeil! (1966) reports the case of a child who uttered /63/ on eight consecutiv' occasions, despite overt parental correction:
/63/ Nobody don't like me.
Such sentences, though not reported from all children so far studie are by no means uncommon at age four or thereabouts. We saw f Chapter 2 that the use of negative subjects with negated verbs is co mon to a number of creole langu,ages, although it would appear to - uncommon in languages generally.
,:.; is hardly surprising that somebody, the only one that
, . ; coi;, 1·ete referen t, is learned first. In consequence, children
:.,. than those who produce sentences like /63/ often say
I don't see somebody rather than I don't see anybody. fl <tbc•dy is je trn<od before anybody, it tends to replace somebody n£n,,es;Jil<e this, giving I don't see nobody. At the same time, used in subject position, it would be unrealistic
child to realize immediately that no further formal bfi;negation is required; unreasonable, too, to expect him to
a once, in sentences like /63/, the system of verbal negation
·w(! have just seen, cost him so much difficulty to acquire.
_ jSt:'.sfi:owing, sentences like /63/ would issue, not from some '' d:.of•the bioprogram to produce multiple negatives, but rather
·• ·1;$:il):herent in the process of learning English.
- - gumel1t stands up much better than most others which
!!tin away creole-like structures in child language. However,
:means immune to question, It depends crucially on inde
·-- 8tivation for the fact that nobody is acquired before any
;. ft :·may be as common or more common than nobody in
- - - _ Irleaves mysterious both the frequency of negative sub
·verb in creoles and the greater frequency of double predi
,in languages generally. There must be some way in which
_tion is more natural than single negation, despite the
•and logicians.
# a case where fuller and more carefully collected data may
·.lve the issue. In creoles, negative subject/negative verb is
..s restricted to generic indefmites like nobody, no one,
ajso involves Neg + NP as in the following GC sentence:
.na bait non kyat not bite no cat
196 ROOTS OF
LANGUAGE
I have not seen any reports of sentences like /64/, but that in itself is no indication that they never occur in child language. If they do not occur, then the "commonsense" argument given above could well be the answer. If they do occur, then an argument based on the order of acquisition of negative indefmites cannot account for all the data, and in light of the creole evidence, the workings of the bioprogram
must again be suspected.
For our fourth and final area of creole acquisition comparison, we will look at the acquisition of causative constructions.
First (for we shall be drawing evidence from the acquisition of
more than one language in this area), we must bear in mind that there are many different ways of making the causative-noncausative dis tinction (henceforth the CNCD). This distinction may be marked on the subject (as in ergative languages) or on the verb. In either case, there may be several different types of marking, especially where verb. marking is the option chosen. English excludes subject marking, but marks the CNCD on the verb in several ways.
The simplest way of marking the CNCD is by using the same
verb for causative and noncausative versions of the same event-Le., for cases where the subject must be the causative agent but also for cases where the subject is the patient, experiencer, or whatever. These cases are differentiated only by transitivity versus intransitivity: causa· tive-agent cases will have both subject and object NP, noncausative
cases will have only subject NP.
/65/ The door opened.
/66/ Bill opened the door.
There are other cases in which the same verb is used for both causative and noncausative versions, but where the noncausative version must be marked by use of the passive:
/67 / *The tree planted.
'
ACQUISITION 197
/68/ The forester planted the tree.
!69! The tree was planted (by the forester).
In yet other cases, a different lexical verb is required for causa tive and noncausative versions:
/70/ The sheep ate (noncausative).
/71/ John ate the sheep ('f John caused the sheep to eat).
/72/ John fed the sheep (causative).
In a fourth set of cases, no appropriate leltical alternation exists, and for causative versions a periphrastic structure must be used:
1731 Mary suffered (noncausative).
1741 John suffered Mary ('f John caused Mary to suffer).
/75/ John made Mary suffer (causative).
Yet another verb-marking method, not used by English but found, for example, in Turkish, is to employ the same lexical verb in both cases but differentiate them by means of a verbal affix. Ergative languages, too, generally use the same lexical verb, but mark causative subjects only with the ergative case-marker; subjects of noncausatives are marked, like objects of causatives, with the accusative case-marker. The particular strategy or selection of strategies chosen by any lan guage to make the CNCD will, of course, reflect the typology of that language. But the function of all of these varying devices is identical.
Some methods of expressing the CNCD would seem to be more easily acquired than others. Slobin (1978) reports a cross-linguistic experiment on the interpretation of causative constructions in which the subjects were child learners of English, Italian, Serbo-Croat, and Turkish. Subjects were required to act out with toy animals sentences such as the horse made the camel run. In English, Italian, and Serbo Croat, such sentences have rather similar structures, involving two dis· tinct verbs, one of them a lexical causative like make {Slobin did not
198 ROOTS OF LANGUAGE
include examples of the three other English ways of marking the CNCD). Turkish, however, uses single verb + afftx:
/76/ At deveyi kotttrsun
horse-nom camel-ace run-causative-0ptative-3rd pers. (lit., the horse ran the camel)
'The horse made the camel run'
The task was performed with almost 100 percent accuracy by Turkish speaking children before the age of three. Serbo-Croat speakers, how ever, did not reach this level until they were four or over, while even at age four the English and Italian speakers averaged between only 60 and 80 percent.
This fmding is hardly surprising in light of the fact that the Turkish causative suffix is learned and used productively and correctly by the age of two-another of those cases of "errorless learning" we discussed earlier in this chapter. Equally early and errorless marking of the CNCD is reported by Schiefflin (1979) for Kaluli, an ergative language of Papua-New Guinea. Here, the suffix which is applied to causative agents is fully acquired and appropriately used by age 2:2, withont ever being generalized to nonagentive subjects.
The fact that CNCD strategies that involve marking of causatives by bound morphemes and single-clause structures (the case in both Turkish and Kaluli) are acquired earlier and more easily than struc tures involving two clauses and a causative verb casts strong doubts on those generative-semanticist analyses that would assume something like Bill caused the door to become open as the underlying structure of sentences like /66/. We shall return to this point shortly when we discuss the treatment by Bowerman (1974) of the acquisition of English causatives.
First, however, we should ask how the cases of Turkish and
Kaluli relate to the creole case. We saw in Chapter 2 that out of the six potential strategies for expressing the CNCD described above (case- . marking,verbal affixation, causal-v'erb periphrasis, passivization, lexical
ACQUISITION 199
alternation, and
simple
transitive-intransitive
alternation ),
creoles use only
the last
named. The
examples
given/86/-/91/,
Chapter 2-
were identical
in
structure with
the English
examples in
the present
chapter, i.e.,
/65/-/66/. Notoriously,
creoles avoid
bound-morphology solutions.
ls it
not then
counterevidence to
the
language bioprogratn
that the
bound-morphology
solutions of
Turkish and
Kaluli are
so quickly acquired?
The answer is: not in the slightest. To provide counterevidence of any value, one would have to show that Turkish-type or Kaluli type solutions were acquired BEFORE the simple transitive-intransitive alternations of the kind that creoles make. This is a most unlikely finding because, in fact, the Turkish and Kaluli solutions ARE AL READY transitive-intransitive alternations which are simply under lined, as it were, by the addition of a further marker. Moreover, English causatives of the door opened /Bill opened door type are certainly acquired at an equally early age; it is the three other types of causative that create problems, as we shall see.
Far from
being counterevidence,
the
Turkish and
Kaluli cases are
confirmatory.
If there
is
a language
bioprogram, then
children are
programmed with
a set
of basic
distinctions which
they
expect that their
native tongue
will implement
somehow. It is
less clear
whether, or ..to
what extent,
they are
specifically programmed
with
the means
t
realize
these distinctions
should their
native tongue
fail
to meet
their expectations
(as is
the case,
most drastically,
if
they are
born into a
pidgin-speaking
community). I
suspect that
the bioprogram
may turn
out as
follows: both
distinctions and
means for
implementing them ar<;l
programmed, but
are not
necessarily conjoint
in the
program. We have
already claimed
that the
bioprogram is
not present
at birth, but
unfolds progressively
during
the course
of the
first four
years or
so; .of Hfe. The distinctions would then be programmed to emerge
prior to .two, possibly around eighteen months or earlier, while the m7ans of implementation would not necessarily emerge until the
·.
third
or. fourth
year.
Thus, children
would start
early searching
for cme;UJs t.o
express the
distinction, and
only if
they failed
to fmd
any
200 ROOTS OF LANGUAGE
would they need the implementation part of the program.
ACQUISITION
201
Put like this, without any supporting evidence, the structure of the bioprogram may look too much like some bizarre kind of provi dentiality, as if a well-meaning deity had foreseen the consequeces of European imperialism and specially equipped his creatures to circum vent them. However, the picture will change considerably in the next
Bowerman (1974) observed that from around 2:3 on, but more
articularly arund the age of three, children would employ intransi t1ve (noncausative) verbs in causative sentences:
177/ Mommy, can you stay this open ?
(sc., make this stay open, keep this open)
chapter, when Ishall discuss the ways in which the bioprogram may
have come into existence. Creole languages will then appear not as a case of divine foresight and beneficence, but rather as the quite acci dental consequence of a much vaster design.
As for those who claim that the causative-noncausative distinc tion is one that is salient to the child and important in his interaction with his environment (and therefore easily learnable from experience),
/78/
/79/
/80/
I'm gonna fall this on her.
(sc., make this fall on her, drop this on her) She came it over there.
(sc., made it come over there) How would you flat it?
(sc., make it flat, flatten it)
it does
not follow,
even if
the claim
is correct,
that he
can learn
from this alone
that the
CNCD is
marked in
the language
he is
learning. There are
innumerable facts
about the
real world
that a
child has learned
by age
two, and
many of
them are
extremely important
to him, but
extremely few
of them
are explicitly
coded in
language. How,
without prior
knowledge, can
he know
which is
to be
coded and
which is not
? And
this is
without even
considering other
kinds of
problems involved in
correct learning
of the
various CNCD
expressions, some
of which
we will
review after
discussing English
acquisitions.
One of the things that facilitates acquisition of Turkish and K 11l nli i q th:i t th"y are uniform· there is hut one way to form catJsatives, and the morpheme involved is unique and undergoes only phonologically-conditioned forms of variation. The picture in English, with its four ways of expressing the CNCD, is at an op.posite extreme. Since conflicting evidence is not much better than no evidence at all, the theory would predict that English learners would treat En glish, in this respect, just as creole children treat a pidgin; that is,.having failed to extract from their input a consistent way of expressmg the CNCD, they would generalize the simplest transitive-versus-intransitive solution, already available to them from open-ty pe verbs, to other classes of verbs. And this is, in fact, exactly what they do.
Note that this creative process extends to adjectives as well as verbs
(/ Of), and that the line between adjectives and verbs may therefore, at this stage, be as thin as it is in creoles.
. This process does not limit itself to intransitives. Transitive verbs hke eat which are restricted to noncausative meanings (see /70/, /71/ abve) and hence, except where cannibalism is practised, to nonhuman objects are also treated as if they were potential causatives:
/81/ Child (pretending to feed doll) : See, she can't eat!
Mother: Just pretend, honey. Child: But Ican't eat h er!
(sc., make her eat, feed her )
. .Clark and Clark (1977:511), in discussing these developments, explicitly compare them with the child's over-generalization of regular plural forms. Ideed, what is .significant about these cases is precisely that they constitute a generalization to English of the regular creole strategy. But a good deal more is involved than that.
" Let s ppose that children learn language by adopting a series of strategies ; whether learned or innate is immaterial here. Such
202 ROOTS
OF
LANGUAGE
strategies would clearly include generalization, one of the best-attested concomitants of acquisition. The strategy of generalization might be informally defined as follows:
Step 1: Look for any regular form with a consistent core of meaning.
Step 2: Apply that form in all possible environments.
Step 3: Compare output with input, and note cases (if any) where these do not match.
Step 4: Remove the exceptions (if any) which appear when Step 3 is applied.
This strategy would be applied in a wide variety of cases: in English pluralization, past tense, and, again, in causatives. The child would note the existence of a number of pairs like X opened /Y opened X (Step 1); he would generalize this, yielding pairs like X ate/ Y ate X (Step 2); he would note counterevidence such as Y fed X (Step 3) ; he would then gradually substitute "irregular" forms like Y fed X for false "regular" forms like Y ate X (Step 4 ).
Let us suppose that the Kaluli learner applied a similar strategy. He would fast observe that a number of nouns in subject position had an ergative affix (Step 1); he would then generalize the affix to all NPs in subject position (Step 2); he would then note that in fact a number of subjects had a different kind of affix (Step 3); he would then work toward a correct distribution of the ergative and accusative affo<:es (Step 4).
Unfortw1ately, while the generalization strategy provides an exact description of what English learners do about causative marking, it provides a completely inaccurate description of what Kaluli learners do about their causative marking. If Kaluli learners applied the same strategy, then we should find large numbers of ergative case-markers applied to experiencer or patient subjects which, according to Schief flin, we do not do. Why is the generalization strategy chosen in one case, but not in the other? \
ACQUISffION 203
A simplistic answer might be: because the two cases are not really comparable. In Kaluli, there is a semantic and pragmatic distinc tion between subjects that cause things to happen and subjects that do not. In English, no such distinction is involved. The sets of verbs that take simple transitive-intransitive alternation, as opposed to those that take lexical alternation, passivization, or causal-verb periphrasis, is not a natural semantic class; nothing but experience could tell one that the jock.ey wal.ked th: horse and the jockey galloped the horse are gram matical, but *the;ockey ran the horse is not.
It is true that the two cases are not comparable from the stand point of an adult who knows something of the grammar of both lan guages-but from the CHILD's viewpoint? How is the child supposed to recognize that semantic sets are involved in one case, but not in the other, unless he already knows what the relevant semantic sets are? He cannot construct semantic sets from experience alone until he has at leat eperienced the full_range of semantic classes that the language contruns (1f then!). Each lexical item has so many parameters of mean ing, could fit into so many partially overlapping classes, that one could never say for certain, given any body of partial data, whether semantic lasses did or did not coincide with the formal differences perceptible m those data. But production does not stand still until the child has master:d possible semantic classes in the language confronting him. The child 1s under pressure to talk, whether he is ready or not.
If the child formed hypotheses, as so many suppose, then there woul be many different hypotheses that the Kaluli child might make. He .might assume that ergative and accusative case-markers are merely sub3ect markers that happened to be in free variation or that the ergative :".arker m:irked subjects that happened also to 'be topics, or that sta.t1v1ty was mvolved somehow (since many causatives are non statives, while.many statives are noncausatives, this hypothesis might be a very.attractive one). But wrong choices of hypothesis would inevit ab_ly yield misplaced case-markers, and this does not seem to happen. Miraculu:ly, somhow:he first "hypothesis" is the right "hypothesis." Similar considerat1.0ns apply to the acquisition of Turkish, except
204 ROOTS OF
LANGUAGE
that here the child's task is made more complex by the fact that the causative marker is only one of a string of verbal suffixes which fre quently co-occur: suffixes which indicate reciprocity, negation, person, number, tense, and the direct/indirect knowledge distinction which, as we saw above, is the only one that seems to cause problems. These strings of suffixes present two quite distinct kinds of problems. The first is a problem of segmentation, which the child presumably solves by some kind of substitution-in-frame process. The second-figuring out what each of the suffixes means, once they have been segmented is less often considered, perhaps because it looks easy to the adult, who can "look in the back of the book," so to speak. In fact, it is much more difficult than the first, and the fact that speech to children is strongly oriented toward the here-and-now, often urged as a reason why children do not need an innate component, in reality makes the task harder rather than easier; every situational context is composed of innumerable factors, any of which, for all the child is supposed to know, could be directly reflected in linguistic structure, and sets of context ual features are seldom constant from one situation to another. The child who tried to figure out which semantic factors were marked grammatically- assuming that a two-year-old mind would be remotely capable of this, even at an unconscious level-would be in the position of someone who tries to solve a maze problem; he would have to take the most promising-looking path, pursue it until it was blocked, then retrace his steps to the beginning again and repeat the process. But when we consider that the same semantic factors are marked gram matically over and over again across the range of human languages, that in effect languages select out of a very short list of semantic primes the ones that they are going to mark, much as they select their phonological inventory from the set of distinctive features, it becomes more reasonable to assume that the child has advance knowledge of the
contents of the category "grammatically-markable semantic feature." Thus, both a "strategies" approach and a "hypothesis-forming"
approach fail to account for the learning of the CNCD in English,
Turkish, and Kaluli. A "strategic'\' approach fails to explain why the
ACQUISITION 205
child over-generalizes in the case of English causatives but not in the case of Kaluli causatives-unless it introduces some "hyperstrategic" device which would tell the child which strategy to use inwhich case.11 A "hypothesis-forming" approach fails because it cannot show how, out of a wide range of hypotheses that the child could form about the nature of Turkish and K.aluli morphemes, that child invariably picks the correct one the first time around. A language-bioprogram approach is able to deal with both problems. It has no strategies, so the first problem is a ghost problem. It specifies the set of distinctions to be marked, so the second problem does not arise.
However, before leaving causatives we should consider an obser vation made in Bowerman (1974) that while "correct" causatives like Mornmy open door are acquired before periphrastic causatives like Billy mtike me cry, "incorrect" causatives do not appear until AFTER the emergence of correct mtik e sentences. From these facts, Bowerman argued (and the argument sounded a lot better in the days when genera tive semantics was still alive) that although the child at an early stage might PRODUCE sentences like Mommy open door, he would not yet be <ible to "break down" such sentences into "a cause proposition and an effect proposition." However, once he had acquired make sentences, which do formally divide the sentence into these proposi tions, he could then analyze sentences with open, etc., in just the sam.e way; and, once this reanalysis was complete, it could be general
·ized. to both transitive and intransitive causatives, as we saw in examples
/77/'/81/.
!here are several problems with this argumen t. It is far from certainthat two distinct propositions do underlie X-open-Y sentences; mere existence of make-X-do-Y sentences is not itself evidence one
ot. the other. Certainly, the results of Slobin's experiments, dis.
.c..,-·-- above•. suggest that the latter sentences are perceptually more
comf•.leic than the former, therefore intrinsically unlikely candidate tr mud.erlyii1g forms.
a more serious objection stems from Slobin's (1978) work
206 ROOTS
OF
LANGUAGE
Slobin found that even at age four, English learners often could not act out make-X -do-Y sentences correctly, which suggests that even at that age, they understood them only imperfectly. If this is the case, then it is hardly likely that children a little over two could understand them structurally in the way that Bowerman claims. Of course, Bower man could not be expected to foresee Slobin's results, but she assumes that children understand make sentences on the basis of no evidence whatsoever.
Let us suppose that children could analyze sentences as she . suggests. In that case, why do they not generalize make-X-do-Y to newly acquired noncausatives, instead of going back to X-open-Y and generalizing that? If they took this surely very plausible step, they would produce perfectly grammatical sentences like can you mak e this stay open?, I'm gonna make this fall on you, etc., in place of the ungrammatical /77/-/81/. The fact that they do not do this, viewed in light of Slobin's results, suggests that the earliest periphrastic make causatives are acquired as idiomatic chunks which are not yet analyzed and therefore not yet generalizable. If they are not analyzed, their analysis cannot be what triggers the spread of incorrect or>et1- type causatives. Bowetman's argument is simply the logical
post hoe, ergo propter hoe.
. As for the alleged delay in the appearance of incorrect open type causatives, this could be due to nothing more complex than the interaction of communicative need with available vocabulary. As long as the child can handle his needs with a relatively small vocabulary, the need to "invent" new causatives simply will not arise. But when the number of things he wants to (and potentially can) say is expanding more rapidly than his vocabulary. which is the case as he gets deeper into his third year, he will need to express concepts like those expressed by drop, flatten, etc., before he has had the opportunity to acquire the appropriate lexical items. And it is from this period, say 2: 6 to 3:3, that most of Bowerman's examples are drawn.
We have now reviewed a "{ide range of evidence, dealing with the
ACQUISITION 207
acquisition of a number of widely different features in several different languages, which cannot easily, if at all, be accounted for by existing theories of language acquisition, but which follow naturally if we assume the existence of an innate bioprogram for language. Moreover, the view of acquisition which this assumption provides is more satis factory on a commonsense level. Hitherto, we have had to assume that small creatures who could barely control their own bowel move ments were capable of learning things-whether you choose to call them "rules" or "behavior" is quite irrelevant at this level-of such abstract ness and complexity that when brought to the level of consciousness, mature scholars often misanalyze them. This paradox was not very often alluded to, but of course it was always there whether it was alluded to or not. Now we can see that children can only learn language because, in effect, they already know a language.
Interestingly enough, a similar view was arrived at by Fodor (1975), arguing in a completely different way from a completely different starting point. According to Fodor, it is not just common sense improbable, it is logically impossible for anyone to learn a lan guage unless he already knows a language. "Learning a language (includ ing, of course, a fast language) involves learning what the predicates of the language mean. Learning what the predicates of a language mean involves learning a determination of the extension of these predicates. Learning a determination of the extensions of the predicates involves learning that they fall under certain rules (i.e., truth rules). But one cannot learn that (P)redicate falls under (R)ule unless one has a lan guage in which P and R can be represented. So one cannot learn a language unless one has a language" (Fodor 1975:63-64).
Thus, to give a concrete example from the first case we looked at in this chapter, a child cannot know which members of the class
a. NP are specific and which are nonspecific unless he knows what specific and nonspecific mean, and he cannot know what they mean unless he has, in some sense, a language in which that meaning is some how represented. As to how it might be represented, that must be
.reserved for the next chapter.
208 ROOTS OF LANGUAGE
Marshall (1979) notes that "no-one has yet brought forth a convincing counter-argument" to Fodor's claim, although most people agree "that this conclusion is untenable." I find it bizarre that a strictly logical conclusion should be regarded as untenable, especially when neither Marshall nor anyone else has been able to suggest any cogent or coherent reason why it should be untenable. I find it doubly bizarre now that Fodor's claim can be supported by the large body of empirical evidence surveyed in the preceding chapters-evidence arrived at by methods totally different fi:om Fodor's and, at the time of gathering, in total ignorance of his claims. When two such dissimilar approaches
agree so completely in their results, neither coincidence nor Jolie a
deux provides a convincing explanation.
However, there is tremendous emotional resistance to the idea that language is innate, some of the reasons for which I would like to glance at briefly in Chapter 5. In part, this emotional resistance is rationalized by some curious ideas about what is entailed in the making of innatist claims. Typical are the following:
It is not very helpful, however, to stop with the conclu sion that linguistic universals spring from innate predisposi tions (Clark and Clark 1977 :517). ·
. .. to assume that deep structures are "innate" makes a postulate out of a problem and this in itself means that all further study can lead us nowhere (Luria 1975:383).
Similarly, I am quite certain that many students of acquisition who have read this far will at the moment of reaching this very para graph be thinking something along the following lines: "Sure, he says that the problems of accounting for acquisition are much simpler if you assume an innate bioprogram. Of course they are; you can simply avoid them by making a completely untestable claim. Everybody knows that children lern; the real job is finding out how they do it, and he's
just shirking that."
ACQUISITION 209
There are so many replies to this, one hardly knows where to start. Let me begin by saying that students of acquisition have shirked
two tasks, not just one: the task of accounting for how creoles were learned, and the task of accounting fof how the ftrst human language, whatever that was, was learned. If they think that these two tasks are somehow different in kind from, or irrelevant to, the processes of
"normal" language acquisition, the onus is now. squarely on them to prove this.
Next, nobody is denying that children learn. Children learning English learn the difference between English and the bioprogram language, and I am sure that they use a whole battery of learning strategies, inductive processes, etc., in the course of doing this. Students of learning in the traditional sense need have no fears that the rug will be pulled out from under them; their field is still ample, and, if nar· rower, at least better defined than before.
All that is threatened is the assumption underlying their attitude: that language cannot be innate. This is in fact an a priori assumption for which the only evidence ever advanced is the ostrich-like pooh poohing typified by Luria's comment. What is more, it is an inherently improbable assumption in view of the fact that the vast majority of hehavior by animate creatures, especially behavior as crucial to a species as language is to ours, is biologically programmed. To suppose that language is not is against the balance of the evidence and a mere
piece of species arrogance, as I am sure any Martian arbiter (if only there were Martians!) would quickly agree.
If indeed language is innate, then to continue looking for ways in. which it could be learned from experience makes about as much sense as dropping your keys on the left-hand side of the road and then looking for them on the right-hand side because there aren't any streetlamps. on the left·hand side. Further, the claim that the theory is untestable, like the claim that innateness represents a necessary terminus for research, is simply untrue.
'
210 ROOTS OF LANGUAGE
Inthe
course of
the present
chapter Ihave
mentioned specifically
a number
of predictions
which the
theory makes
about acquisition
processes; these
should be
easily testable
by
reference to
primary data.
Moreover, acquisition
has yet
to be
studied in
the vast
majority of human
languages. All
of them
should show
reflexes of
the bioprogram
features claimed
in this
chapter, although
clearly those
reflexes will
differ from
language to
language since
we cannot
study
the activity
of the
bioprogram directly,
but only
its interaction
with particular
target languages.
Thus, the
evidence available
will not
always be
clear, and its
interpretation will
be more
often than
not a
matter of
legiti mate
controversy; but
nobody can
claim that
such evidence
is either scarce
or hard
to obtain.
The fact
that I
have been
able to
derive so much
evidence from
works whose
authors were
not even
looking for
phenomena crucial
to the
present theory
lends further
support to
the claim that
evidence will
be plentiful;
if even
the crude
plow of
the pi0neer throws
up nuggets,
there can
be little
doubt that
the trained
prospector following
on his
heels will
fmd many
more.
Moreover, there are other ways in. which the theory can be tested. One is by a study of the present-day acquisition of creole languages, a study which has yet to be carried out. Although creoles are nowadays acquired in just the same way as other languages, the nature of their origins ought to mean that they are acquired with far fewer mistakes on the part of the children, and in a far shorter period
,,f Comp1.ri:o:ons betwet>n ricquisition in creole and noncreole
i:-· sf'<; cm f'mpiricalJy test this hypothesis, and if differences in time span and/or quantity of error do indeed exist, they can give them a reasonably accurate statistical measurement. Of course, the results
will be more meaningful the more that creoles relatively free of super . strate influence, which have remained relatively unchanged since their origin, are made the subject of study. Little value would be obtained from a study of HCE acquisition, for example, given the rising tide of English that is presently eroding it , and the fact that in its purest forn1, it is spoken only by a minority of the population, few if any of wholllf are now under forty-five.
ACQUISITION 211
Eventully, of
curse, empirical
testing of the
theory will
depend on
advances m
the field
of neurology,
since whatever
is innate
must have n bjective
physical foundation
in the
structure and/or
mode of funct10ng
of
the human
brain. Indeed,
linguists are
all too
often oefull
ignort
of this
field. For
example, Alleyne
( 1979)
writes: There
is nothmg
readily
apparent
in the
neurological and
cognitive sysems of
humans that
makes it
natural or
inevitable" that
the cate
gories I ave proposed
for TMA
systems should
be the
appropriate ones
(empha.s1s added). The expectation that the appropriateness of semantic c.ategones should be "readily apparent" in our neurological and cogni tive systems would appear to presuppose a human brain charted labeled, and numbered like the old-time phrenologist's diagrams. We ar: ower'e nea: that stage yet; if we get there, it will be due in part to the lmu:st s tlhng the neurologist some things to look for, and the neurol-
0?1st s .telling the linguist whether what he has found confirms or disconfirms what the linguist predicted.
Remarks like those of Luria or Clark and Clark cited above seem o nvision the linguist as some kind of bucolic sheriff, shaking his fist impotence because the perpetrator has just fled across the county hne. So what if w hae o go learn neurology ? So what if neurologists hve to g learn ln;i.gmstics? We are boring the same mountain from different sides, and the idea that innateness spells scholarly impotence
reflects only the lack of imagination of those who entertain it.
. We have not even yet exhausted the remedies available to us t1¥11t; h.ere and now. There is a diachronic aspect to the whole issue w111.ch has not yet been appreciated. The bioprogram itself must have a history and an origin, and that history and origin cannot lie beyond all tracing. It is true that the attempt to trace them will kad us into what s proved a veritable Sargasso Sea of theories: glottogenesis, the ong1 of human language. But we will have at least one advantage over earher voyagers. We will be equipped with a much more explicit theor, and oe moreo.ver that can draw on the many advances in
evolutionary science which have taken place since the last time glotto genetic speculation was fashionable.
212 ROOTS
OF
LANGUAGE
In the next chapter, accordingly, we will attempt to reconstruct the prehistory and early history of human language, in order to deter mine, if at all possible, what might be the origin s of the language bi0, program whose consequences the first three chapters have explored, In particular, we will try to suggest specific bases for a least some of those semantic distinctions which, as the present chapter has suggested; . must constitute an important, although far from the only, part of . the structure of the bioprogram. For the convenience of the reader, I· repeat the four major distinctions dealt with in this chapter, together • with evidence for each: ·
ACQUISITION 213
and quite unavoidably, we must take off for a more speculative realm. And yet in that realm, we must never lose sight of the fact that there is at least one thing there that is as certain as death or taxes. Even if it could be shown that natural languages are learned, even if it could
. . be shown that creoles are learned, it cannot be shown that the original human language was learned-for it could not have been learned. Even jf one believes that our ancestors were taught by spacemen, then the spacemen weren't taught, or whoever taught the spacemen wasn't taught. There is no escape in regress. Somewhere, sometime, somehow, human language begar1, and it could not have begun through acquisition strategies, or inductive processes, or hypothesis formation, or mother's
1,1'.1'
1) Specific-nonspeci fic. Evidence: universality of creole home-cooked language lessons. It must have been "invented." And if
versus indefinite article; errorless English acquisition of a1 there were already processes by which language could be invented, versus a2 • it goes against parsimony to suppose that the human species then had
2) State·process. Evidence: "skewing" of creole verbal systems;· to acquire a whole lot of new processes in order to learn what it could distribution of nonpunctuals in creoles; errorless acquisition already invent and therefore, presumably, reinvent, whenever occasion of English ·ing distribution; errorful acquisition of Turkish l"ight arise. As we shall see in Chapter 4, it is much more plausible to
-dI/.mis distinction. suppose that each step slowly and painfully made in the direction of
3) Punctual-nonpunctual. Evidence: universality of nonpunctual language was then-harl to be-incorporated into the genotype so that marking in creoles; mode of acquisition of past tenses in it could serve as the take-off point for the next step.
French and Italian. Imagine a man ascending the face of a glacier. Painfully and 4)Causative-noncausative. Evidence: N;V/NVNi alternation in laboriously he hacks out each step. Each step has to be hacked out to creoles and English acquisition; errorless acquisition of causa- give him space so that he can stand and hack out the next step. But tive marking in Turkish and Kaluli; problems of English, the steps remain behind him when he has moved on, and once they
Italian, and Serbo-Croat learners with "ii;erneracti\re-;;enaa11ti•CS· l ·..·· are complete, the merest novice can attain the summit with ease. type" causatives.
This list is by no means intended to be exhaustive. Its members are merely those distinctions best attested so far in both creoles and acquisition. In addition, we will look out for factors which might have influenced the more purely syntactic features we have surveyed, such as the order of auxiliaries, sentential complementation, verb serialization, etc.
So far, our flight has h d the ground of empirical fact. Now,
ORIGINS 215
Chapter 4
ORIGINS
Ever since it has been anything you could even remotely call a science, linguistics has been set in a mold of static formalism. I do not make this remark in a spirit of reproach, as do so many who offer in exchange some form of quantitative, communication-oriented, or functionalist approach , equally static but a whole lot less rigorous. There are many points in the history of a science when developments·. that may not seem desirable from an ideal viewpoint may be strategi cally .necessary if the discipline is to advance; such I believe were the
longer be ignored, they are verbalized away, rather than grappled with; I am thinking, for instance, of Chomsky's response to a perfectly legitimate question by Harnad (Hamad et al. 1976:57). 1 Of course, if you believe that human language is always and everywhere tbe same, that all languages are equal in expressive power, and that how human language developed can have no conceivable relevance to what language is like today, if indeed it developed at all, if indeed it did not spring irt its entirety from Jove's brow by some beneficent and unprecedented mutation-if you believe all of this, then you are ill-adapted to under stand the dynamic processes which, as every man of sense since Hera ditus has realized, govern all that takes place in our universe. Those in whom the malady is less advanced are hereby requested to retune their receivers to a processual wavelength, if they wish to ge.t the most out of the present chapter.
The fact that static formalism has prevented linguists from grappling with the origins of language has not, of course, prevented persons from other disciplines-with, unfortunately but inevitably, rather less understanding of all that language entails-from trying iheir hands at it. Their efforts-and those of earlier generations of linguists-have yielded a host of purely speculative theories which I shall not attempt to review here.2 Suffice it to say that all of them suffer from the same defect: they concentrate, exclusively or almost so, on the moment when recognizable speech f'irst emerged, when Ug first
idealizations initiated by de Saussure and refmed by Chomsky. I would
sai. d to
0g,
". . . . ." (". . .. ." bem. g some
km' d of meam.ngr,.w_,, even
not
even
go
so
far
as
to
say
that
such
idealizations
had
outlived
their
usefulness. In particular, work by Chomsky and his associates over the last decade-which I understand is aimed principally at establishing, as it were, the outer limits of language-is I think extremely important and complementary, rather than opposed, to the present approach, as I shall try to show in the fmal chapter.
The only problem from my point of view with the generativist approach is that it tends to create a mind-set rather difficult to
to the kinds of problems we have to address in the present study. acute cases, the mind·set may be so rigid that when problems can no
'
if only monolexical, proposition, delivered in the vocal mode). This, which one can only characterize as the Flintstones approach to lan guage origins, totally ignores the vast amount of preadaptation that was necessary before you could even get to that point, and equally ignores the vast amount of postadaptation that was necessary in order to get from that point to fully developed human language.
That the Flintstones approach lives is shown by the current hottest number in origins studies-the "gestural-0rigin" theory (Hewes 1973; 1976, etc.). Whether or not the theory that a gestural language preceded spoken language is a violation of parsimony (as suggested by
216 ROOTS
OF
LANGUAGE
Hill and Most [1978] ) is really beside the point. Either this gestural language was of a structure as complex and noniconic as modern sign-in which case the real question would be, how did this gestural language develop?-or it was some much simpler and more iconic system-in which case the real question would be, how did it get to be more abstract and complex? In fact, the "gestural-origins" theory is just as much focused on the supposed "critical point" of language development, and just as indifferent to any of the substantive questions about language origins as any of the other "Flintstone" theories.
The trouble with almost all previous attempts to look at origins is that they do not go back far enough. If we were to understand thoroughly all that language involved, we would probably have to go back to the birth of the lowliest animate creat ures, for language depends crucially on a matrix of volition and primitive consciousness which must have begun to be laid down hundreds of millions of years ago. Such an approach lies far beyond the scope of the present volume, and will be addressed in a subsequent work, Language and Species. Here, I shall go back no further than, say, Dryopithecus, although a brief glance at the frog will not hurt us.
Again , as in previous chapters, a certain amount of ground clearing work must be done if we are to avoid irrelevant distractions. At the very least, we will have to dispose of what I shall call the Para dox of Continuity.
The Paradox of
Continuity is,
at the
present moment,
perhaps the greatest
obstacle
to a
proper understanding
of
language origins,
as well
as a
powerful factor
in keeping
linguistics isolated
from other human
studies. It
may be
expressed as
follows. On
the one
hand, all the
species-specific adaptive
developments that
we know
of have
come about through
regular evolutionary
processes, and
language, remarkable
though it may
be, is
only one such
development; therefore,
language must have
evolved out
of prior
mammalian communication
systems. On the
other hand,
if one
has anything
like a
complete understanding
of what
language is
and does,
one realizes
that there
is not
simply a
quantitative, but
a qualitative
and indeed
unbridgeable, gulf
between
'
ORIGINS 217
the abstractions and complexities of language and the most abstract and complex of known mammalian systems (which, indeed, seem pretty direct and simple); therefore, language cannot have evolved out of prior mammalian communication systems. Thus, there must have been evolutionary continuity in the development of language, yet there cannot have been evolutionary continuity in the development of language. This is the Paradox of Continuity, and debate on it has followed the approved political model of both sides hurling slogans at one another from their different and, as we shall see, mutually irrele vant positions.
All paradoxes that are resolvable are resolved by showing that one or more of the presuppositions on which they are based is incorrect or at best misleadingly stated. In the present case, both sides of the paradox have weak legs. The weak leg of the discontinuity side is a belief in the unitary nature of language; the weak leg of the continuity side is the belief that if language evolved out of anything, it must have evolved out of another communication system. Let us examine each of these in turn.
The belief that language is one and indissoluble has also taken its toll on the primate-experiment debate. In both areas, the central point of debate has been "When can X be said to have language?" "language" being defined, by the discontinuity side, as something virtually indistinguishable from Modern English or Ancient (ancient!) Greek. Although the continuity side may have protested the definition, few have protested the gambit; instead of pointing out that the ques tion "Has X got language or hasn't he?" is an intrinsically stupid, irrelevant, and actively misleading question, they have mostly con tented themselves with trying to get linguists to lower the target (for a generally bracing and insightful, if overly soft on the continuity side, account of the ape debate, see Linden 1974 ).
In fact, we will get nowhere until we appreciate that anything as complex as language cannot possibly be an internally undifferenti ated object, but rather must consist of a number of interacting systems,
218 ROOTS
OF LANGUAGE
some of which may originally have developed for other purposes and many, perhaps all, of which must have developed at different times and under different circumstances. Once we accept this, we can per ceive the development of language as a succession of stages and there fore amenable to reconstruction and study, rather than as a quantum leap, which then imposes on us, whether we will or no, some kirid of catastrophe theory as the only possible origins story. It then becomes possible to replace "Has X got language or hasn't he?" with the more interesting, and more answerable question, "How far has X come along the road to language-specifically, which of the necessary pre requisites does he have, and which does he still lack?"
In the
opposite camp,
the belief
that language
must have
evolved from some
prior communicative
system if
it evolved
at all
is clearly
connected with
the belief
that language
is only,
or originally,
or pri
marily, a
communicative system.
Any doubt
cast on
this is
enough to send
the continuity
side into
a flurry
of pooh-poohing.
Typical is
the attitude of
Young (1978:175),
who finds
it "a
further problem"
that "a
major use
of language
in each
of us
is internal-for
thinking, that
is for
speaking
to
ourselves,"
but
nevertheless concludes
that it
is "rather
perverse
not to
consider
human spoken or
written language
as primarily
a functional
system evolved
for communication"
(emphasis added). Perhaps
a biologist
may be
forgiven for
not realizing
that language is
not just
"for communication"
but is
also that
which is com
municated. But
in fact
the belief
is widespread
that all
language in
volved was
giving labels
to things
and stringing
the labels
together. It is
assumed as
self-evident that
when we
were ready
to talk,
all the things
in the
universe stood
there waiting-rock
and river,
dodo and
elephant, storm
and sunrise,
thirst and
evil, love
and dishonor-all
waiting patiently for
their labels.
That the
world had
to be
recreated in the
image of
language before
anyone could
communicate about
any thing at
all is
an idea
that seems
simply not
to have
occurred on
the continuity side.
How that
recreation was
carried out
will form
an essential part
of the
analysis that
follows.
Crucial to extant continuity models, even the most recent, is
'
ORIGINS 219
the belief, whether implicit or explicit, that you could get from a call system to modern language (with or without an intermediate stop at a gestural system) by a series of imperceptible stages. Thus, Stephenson (1979) proposes a "dialectical" evolutionary process by which, when our ancestors were more preyed upon than preying, they learned to control involuntary vocalizations and replace them with manual signs (how a four-foot hominid in five-foot grass informs his cohorts of the imminent approach of a sabertooth by gesture is left unclear); then when they got to be better predators and were less concerned with unobtrusiveness, they were able to return to voice, which was now under cortical control. "The dialectic consists in an increase in the level of complexity of messages coincident with a decrease in the limbic content of messages as one proceeds through calls, through gesture, to spoken language and into written language" (emphasis added). Steklis and Raleigh (1979) dismiss the gestural phase on principles of parsimony, but maintain call-language continuity by accepting the claim by Hockett and Ascher (1964) that progressive blending and differentiation of primate calls could have mediated the transition. 3
All these views share the assumption that the only significant difference between call systems and language lies in "an increase in the level of complexity of messages." In fact, complexity is not the issue. A given alarm call could well receive the reading, "Look out, you guys, a large predator is already near and rapidly approaching, so get up the nearest tree as quick as you can," which is surely at least as complex as "the boy ran" or "John kicked Bill." Language depends crucially not on complexification but on the power to abstract, as units, classes of objects, classes of actions, classes of events, and classes
· of yet more abstract kinds (think, for example, for a moment of all the different kinds of relationships that can be conveyed by so simple a predication as X has Y). It is these classes, not the particular objects, actions, etc., of which they are composed, that constitute the units that language must represent; but in order to represent them it must first abstract them from the constant sensory bombardment to which all creatures are subject (we will see how in a moment). An alarm call
220 ROOTS OF LANGUAGE
abstracts nothing from that bombardment, but merely selects from it a set of stimuli (smells, colors, physical movement, etc.) to which some kind of immediate reaction is the only appropriate response. A call and a sentence may both constitute communication, but in the ways in which they work they are more at odds than chalk and cheese; for some chalks and some cheeses at least have the same color and texture, whereas language and call systems do not even have this superficial resemblance.
Hvwever, once we
are prepared
to consider
the possibility
that language could
have developed
in a
regular evolutionary
fashion with
out having
sprung from
some primitive
repertoire of
grunts, groans,
and grimaces, all
the objections
to a
continuity approach
melt like
snow in August.
Once we
have gotten
over the
"communicative"
hang-up, we can
see that
where we
must look
for the
distinctiveness of human
language is
not in
what it
shares with
call systems-both
communicate but in
how it differs
from call
systems-language
communicates con
cepts, call
systems communicate
stimuli. If
we don't
understand con ceptualization,
we don't
understand language,
period.
However, if
we are
to write
an evolutionary
history of
con ceptualization,
there is
one more
ghost to
be exorcised-the
ghost of
Descartes. This
particular specter
is still
haunting the
behavioral sci
ences .
even though
the naturalistic
observations on
which its
man animal dichotomy
was based are
now over
three hundred
years out
of date. If
you believe,
as Descartes
believed, that
animal behavior
can be explained
by principles
as simple
as (and
similar to)
those hydraulic
forces which
activated the "living
statuary" of
17th-century French
gardens, then
it does not
seem so
unreasonable to
suppose that
animals are automata
but that
we (with
souls stashed
in our
pineal glands)
are not. In
light of
all that
has been
learned about
both the
structure of the
nervous system
and the
behavior of
species since
Descartes' day, it
is merely
absurd-possible to
salvage only
with the
logical, if
counter factual,
strategy of
the hardcore
behaviorist who
would claim
that animals are
automata but
that so
too are
we.
\
ORIGINS 221
There are four possible answers to the question, "Who has con sciousness, volition, etc.?" (all the so-called "nonphysical" attributes summed up under the illegitimate label mind ): animals do, but we don't; animals don't, but we do; animals don't, and we don't ; animals do, and we do. In all the history of human folly, I know of no one who has seriously asserted the first. The second is Descartes' answer. The third is the hardcore behaviorist's answer. The fourth, curiously enough, has seldom been made and has been scorned almost as often as it has been made, although in light of what we know now it would seem the most logical. Since it now appears that evolution has ad vanced not by leaps and bounds but by infinitesimal gradations, we either have to claim that with respect to a particular set of attributes (volition, consciousness, thought, language), evolution behaved in quite a different-and, incidentally, completely mysterious-way from that in which it behaved with regard to all other attributes, or we have to accept that at least some of, or some ingredients critical to, these attributes were and presumably still are shared by species other than our own. I know of no logical argument against the second move although the emotional arguments against it seem as numerous as they are strong. Let us therefore see how conceptualization- without which language would have been impossible- could have evolved.
Conceptualization is intimately linked to perception, if only in the sense that if there were no perception, conceptualization could not take place. But there is, I think, a great deal of difference between a concept and a percept, which tends to be obscured by loose ways of talking and thinking. We use "concept" for any kind of mental image. In fact, there are mental images of percepts and of concepts. We might say, loosely, that I have a concept of the glass that is presently standing on my table, meaning, I can close my eyes and present myself with a mental image of my glass. That is a mental image of a percept, i.e., my glass as I perceived it now-empty, but for a small slice of lemon. Of course, I could imagine it completely empty-which is a percept of how it was at another time; or full-which is the same. However, I can also have a mental image of the category glass, which embraces
222 ROOTS OF LANGUAGE
my glass and all other glasses, and which is not a percept, but a true concept.
In some species, percept and concept may not be so far apart.
Consider the frog. The frog can discriminate "fly" and "not fly," at least as long as the fly is moving. It is unlikely that a frog can tell one fly from another or would preserve memory images of individual flies, even if it had a memory to preserve them in. In a sense, percep tion and conceptualization in the frog are one. Only in a sense, of course; for true conceptualization, you have to have volitional con trol of concepts, and the frog is as far from that as from flying. But in the sense that perception in the frog is generalized, it is like con ceptualization.
Now, the fibers which connect a frog's retina with its brain are capable of passing only about four kinds of information, of which only two are relevant to the perception of flies. The first of these two kinds is supplied by a set of neurons specialized to detect small moving objects with curving edges; the second is another set specialized to detect sharp boundaries of light and shade (Burton 1970). There is then a rather tenuous and metaphorical sense in which we could say that the froggy concept of "fly" IS the firing of these two sets of neurons. Of course, we are several scores of millions of years away from true conceptualization; but the journey has certainly begun.
In the
course of
those years,
it might
have seemed
that per ception and
conceptualization were
moving apart,
as perception
became not only
wider in
range (most
of the
environment seems
quite un
differentiated to
the frog)
but more
particularized, with
so many parameters
recoverable that
maybe even
individuals could
be recogniz
able to
one sense
or another,
or a
combination of
several (when
our dog recognizes
us, smell
is presumably
dominant).4
And yet
the basic
mechanics by
means of
which this
enhanced perception
was
carried out were
in fact
no different
from those
of the
frog. There
might be many
more sets
of neurons
programmed to
respond to
many more varied
types of
stimuli, but
a percept
would be
still the particular
firing pattern of the particular set of neurons activated by that set of
\
stimuli which constituted the object perceived.
ORIGINS 223
The problem of how a percept becomes a memory is still far from solved. Part of the problem may be that most studies. of memory have really been studies of learning-that is, of forced situations in which given factors caused changes of behavior. Thus, if an octopus were trained to attack horizontal but not vertical rectangles, two sets of feature detectors, each of which could formerly initiate more than one program of action-advancement, withdrawal, indifference can now only initiate one each, with corresponding changes in the neural connections involved (Bradley and Young 1975). Unfortunately, such findings do not seem to generalize to mammals, where "the search for the engram" remains as fruitless as it was thirty years ago (Lashley 1950). Furthermore, it would be unreasonable to expect them to generalize to the quite qualitatively different kinds of memory traces which concern us here. For the kinds of memory traces that modify behavior- those traditionally studied by psychologists-may be (although of course they are not necessarily ) laid down in ways quite different from those of memories which may only modify beha vior in the most indirect of ways, if indeed at all (e.g., my stored memory image of my neighbor's new car, accurate enough to enable me to distinguish it from others, but unlikely to prompt me to steal it, polish it, avoid it, etc., and hardly to be described as having been learned by me except under the vaguest and most vacuous reading of learning ).
Therefore, I shall assume that long-term storage is achieved (precisely how need not concern us) by storing features of images rather than images themselves. Let us assume I can reliably identify several hundred human faces. Now, the mental representations of these faces that I need for matching purposes-I can think of no other way in which recognition could be carried out-are not stored separately in some analogue of a box in my head, not even in the form of macro molecules. Rather, each of the horizontal, vertical, slanted, curving, etc., lines that go to make up faces-as well as lots of other things, of course-is represented by a particular set of neurons. The superset
224 ROOTS OF LANGUAGE
composed by these sets is simply an analogue of the superset of feature detecting neuron sets. The data recorded by the straight-vertical-line perceiving set of neurons (or however much of them are transferable) are simply transferred to the long-term storage set for straight vertical lines, and so on. The fact that a particular batch of data went into a particular batch of storage sets must also somehow be recorded, in terms of sensitized synaptic pathways or whatever, or l could never recover Aunt Emma's face from its component bits. But in some such general manner-and Iapologize to neurologists for my rather Rube Goldberg picture-the processes of perception, storing, coding, and accessing must be carried out.
It
follows
that
individual
images
would
not
be
individually
stored-members
of
the
same
class
of
images
would
not
necessarily
be
stored
together,
while
the
storage
of
unlike
objects
might
be
strikingly
similar.
Let
us
consider
the
possible
storage
of
the
percept
images
of
three
objects,
any
one
of
which
would
have
to
be
separately
and
individually
recoverable:
Aunt
Emma's
latest
hat,
the
S
ugarloaf
at
Rio
de
]
aneiro,
the
distribution
curve
for
IQ
in
an
average
population.
These
objects
belong,
respectively
,
to
three
quite
distinct
classes;
the
class
of
hats,
the
class
of
mountains,
and
the
class
of
distribution
curves.
However,
in
their
general
shape
they
share
some
obvious
simi
larities.
Let
A
through
G
represent
sets
of
storage
neurons,
each
set
representing
storage
of
a
particular
parameter.
Then
Aunt
Emma's
latest
hat
migh
t
be
represented
by
sets
ABCDE,
the
Sugarloaf
at
Rio
de
Janeiro
by
sets
BCDEFG,
and
the
distribution
curve
for
IQ
in
an
average
population
by
sets
CDEF.
If
I
wish
to
visualize
an
image
of
any
one
of
the
three,
l
activate
just
these
sets,
(And what constitutes the "I" that activates? Analogy from observed conspecifics, use of mirrors and other reflecting substances, plus the higher-order "traffic-control" neurons which must exist to establish priorities in brain activity if the whole thing isn't to degen erate into electrochemical chaos.)
Some kind of memory storage of particular experiences must go pretty far down the mammal\(m phylum. So too, I suggest, must
ORIGINS 225
the power of playback-voluntary recall of images or sequences of images. At the very least, involuntary playback (another name for dreaming) does. Reptiles don't dreani, mammals do. Moreover, dream ing (human dreaming, for sure; mammalian dreaming, very likely) consists not of just straight playback but of the recombination of stored imagery, something that would be difficult or impossible if memories were individually stored. Once playback, straight or crooked, came under cortical control, our ancestors were well on their way to the world map that is a prerequisite for language-without which there is hardly anything worth communicating to communicate.
The question evolutionists will ask at this point is: why ? Why should mammals develop these capacities? Prehistory was not a dress rehearsal for homo sapiens. What selective advantage did the species gain ? Some psychologists have attempted answers in very vague and general terms. For instance, Harlow (1958), discussing the fact that some apes and monkeys can solve in captivity problems far more complex than they would ever meet in nature, pins his faith on receptor system development, since more finely calibrated receptor systems entail an increase in the central nervous system: "As long as increas ingly complex receptor systems provide the organism with slight survival advantages, one can be assured that increasingly complex nervous systems will develop; and as long as increasingly complex
nervous systems develop, the organism will be endowed with greater
potentialities which lead inevitably to learning." Similarly, Passingham (1979), who finds it "puzzling" that chimpanzees should have language capacities which "do not appear to be used in the wild," surmises either that "chimpanzees do in fact use their language capacities in the wild" in ways which two decades of patient and trained observation have somehow still failed to reveal!-or that "their abilities . .. must be general ones, allowing them to do other things of importance to them in the wild."
The vagueness and timidity of these suggestions are, I am sure, due to the Cartesian hangover, although the class "Cartesian evolution ist'·'· ought to constitute a logical contradiction. It should be pretty
226 ROOTS OF LANGUAGE
obvious that the power to review the past would provide its possessor with another power of the highest value in natural selection: the power to predict. Psychics aside, prediction is based on analysis of past events, and becomes of greater importance as creatures evolve and become more complex. Relatively simple creatures lead relatively simple lives; it is possible to program them, up to around the frog level, so that they will respond automatically to all or almost all the contingencies they are likely to encounter. With more complex crea tures, in particular with predators who have to keep (literally!) one jump ahead of their prey, not only does the list of conceivable contin gencies get too long to program, it would probably be dysfunctional for such creatures to be programmed down to the wire, so to speak. Such programming would leave them unable to respond appropriately, to vary the moment of attack in accordance with the wind, the light, the prey's motions, and countless other environmental factors, to determine which member of a herd to attack, and so on. The power to review past sequences of events, whether at a conscious or an un conscious level, and to abstract those factors which made for success or failure in particular cases, would confer a massive advantage on its possessor- or one that would have been massive had the prey not de veloped along similar lines. As shown in the excellent survey by Jerison ( 1973), brain size for both prey and predator has gradually but con tinuously increased throughout the mammalian era, with the predators always slightly ahead of the prey.
We do not of course know, and have as yet no way of determin ing, how far down the evolutionary scale such capacities might extend. But such capacities and more might have been needed to ensure the survival of the primates, creatures who were predators to some species and prey to others; and it is a reasonable assumption that Dryopithecus, the presumed common ancestor of ourselves and the chimpanzees, who lived between five and fifteen million years ago, had them and probably had more.
We have so far surveyed the capacity to form and store percepts
and to review percepts and sequences of percepts under voluntary
'
ORIGINS 227
control. But we have not yet considered how percepts can become concepts. Until a percept- the image of a particular entity on a par ticular occasion-can be replaced at will by a concept-the image of a class of entities, divorced from all particular instantiations of that class-then the power to predict is limited. A creature concerned with prediction does not want to have to say, "The boar I wounded three years ago did such and such, and the boar I wounded a year ago did the same, but this wounded boar is a different boar so I suppose I'll just have to wait and see." It wants to be able to say, "Wounded boars do such and such, so I can anticipate what will happen and be ready to act appropriately." The prediction may be quite wrong, of course-with fatal results. But if it is right just that little bit more often than chance, the survival chances of the species are perceptibly enhanced.
Indeed, instantaneity would have rated above accuracy. The creature that could achieve 60 percent accuracy in one second would surely have outlasted the creature that could achieve 100 percent accuracy in ten seconds-because in those ten seconds, too many of the latter would have gotten themselves killed.
"To generalize is to be an idiot" (Blake 1808),s but for better or worse, the road to humanity was paved with generalizations. We assume our ancestors to have been primates not adapted for predation but driven by climatic change to adopt, in part, the habits of preda tors-or so most anthropologists have held for a good many years. Lacking the tiger's fang, the leopard's speed, the disciplined pack strategies of the canids, they had to compete with these and more in a dry epoch when pickings were scarce. Under such circumstances they would have selected very fast and very naturally for some kind of instant recognition-and-reaction device-one that would respond not merely to the briefest of glimpses of possible prey or rival predator, but to the most minimal clues in the environment: movement of a branch at a particular altitude, say, coupled with the appearance of a patch of brown slightly different in shade and texture from the fall leaves that surround it.
228 ROOTS OF LANGUAGE
That modern hunters still have such a device, even though changing times have made it more dysfunctional, was illustrated a few years ago when a national magazine carried out an inquiry into shooting accidents during the deer season. Hunters were shooting one another instead of the deer. The vast majority of these incidents oc curred in the half-light of dawn or dusk. The shooters, when inter- · viewed, almost invariably said that they had seen a deer-not "thought"\ they had seen one, but actually seen it-and only seconds after they. had pulled the trigger did this image resolve itself into a wounded
dying fellow-hunter. From a few half-perceived dues of color, shape/ . and texture, they had created phantom deer and reacted to their ...
own creation before additional sensory input could replace the pro0 ;;
jected image wirh a real one. E·
The reader may easily demonstrate a similar if less lethal effect. '.'
Simply draw, on a piece of paper or a blackboard, the structure por trayed in Figure 4.1below :
Figure 4.1
The minimal "flower"
ORIGINS 229
you then ask what this is, people will reply, nine times out of ten, flower.n Ihave tried this many times on students; you can often see their jaws literally drop when you tell them, "No, it's a dot, nine short
•. ··••·· Jnres, and. one long one."
capacity to construct predictive images obviously entails the
Pfexistence of class concepts. The misguided hunters did not project
an· ag of some specific deer, but rather that of any member of the
ignus deer. To us, with the elaborate and labeled cognitive map which
\•;li!llguage provides for us, the genus deer seems self-evident. But try to
:ffi:illlllgin1;:, if you can, the task of constructing the category deer from
:· ni:tch, by inductive reasoning, without benefit of labels or of map.
<;J) t <:ome in a number of shapes, sizes, and species. Some are dark,
illt>i'rie• are light. Some have horns, some don't, some sometimes do,
.•,fud. sol11e sometimes don't. Where do deer stop and other genera
•.'liegiri? The problems are endless.
,.:?·••· .Yet
as
work by
Berlin (1972)
and his
associates
has shown, gneric
rt:imes
are the
most richly
represented in
natural languages
t'
.<.iliore; .numerous than both the higher-order categories ("unique begin-
·';p. r'i,'> e.g., plant, animal, or "life forms," e.g., tree, bush) or the lower 4rde;r.ones ("specHlc name," e.g., Ponderosa pine, jack pine, or "vari r '.'n:ime/' e.g., northern Ponderosa pine, UJestem Ponderosa pine );
.;. v(!tiably monomorphemic (contrasted with specific or varietal names);
je;ctiyely perceived as primary; the first to be learned by children. U.tr"a/gopd bet they were among the first words of human language.
.. < Why the genus and not the species? If your eyes are as sharp as
t:slii;e'.out ancestors' were, differences between species must often
. . e< been as salient as, or more salient than, differences between
·ghta\ But behavioral differences would have had greater significance
;for<..our ancestors than visual differences. All deer, whether large or c;s)11all.> plainor spotted, with or without horns, had a number of things jii•.fo)l.1!11611: they were fleet of foot; nervous enough to make stalking
.. •t3,ifftcUlt but not impossible; often camouflaged by the light-and
}effects of foliage; excellent eating if you could get them, and so
\
230 ROOTS OF LANGUAGE
But the fact that classification of the genera would have been selectively advantageous for our ancestors does not in and of itself make such classification possible. A number of preadaptations would also have had to occur, perhaps the most obvious of which is cross modal association-the importance of which for language has been stressed in a number of papers by Geschwind (1974). For the concepts of genera could not have been built on sight alone; each of the senses must have contributed in varying degrees. But the real key to the crucial developments must lie in the nature of the recognition device.
Ihave
said that
members of
our species,
and even
dogs, if
their behavior is
anything to
go by,
must be
able to
distinguish individuals,
and there
is
no reason
to
suppose that
our capacity
to summon
up at will
the visual
images of
individuals necessarily
indicates any
very recent evolutionary
development. I
suggested also
that these
images might be
stored in
a fractured manner,
so
that similar sets
of bits, when
put together
in various
ways, could
constitute very
distinct images.
But why
in that
case do
we not
project genera
that would include
in the
same category,
say, Aunt
Emma's
latest
hat,
the
Sugar
loaf
at
Rio
de
Janeiro,
and the
distribution
curve
for
IQ
in
an
average
population?
The utility, or lack of it, that such a category might have is
beside the point. If we built category concepts on the basis of in dividual percepts, such would be the kinds of categories we would most likely wind up with. One of the main reasons that we do not is that concepts, as distinct from percepts, do not exist in isolation. We do not delimit percepts in terms of percepts. I do not distinguish Aunt Emma's face because it is bounded on one side by Aunt Mary's face, on another by Cousin Emily's face, and so on; nor (just to show that this fact has nothing to do with any heightened perception of
conspecificsJ do I distinguish my toothbrush because it is bounded
on one side by my wife's toothbrush, on another by my son's tooth brush, etc. But I do distinguish deer because they are bounded by horses on one side, cattle on another side, and so on; I do distinguish toothbrushes in general because ey are bounded by hairbrushes,
ORIGINS 231
nailbrushes, bootbrushes,
etc. Deer
stop where
horses begin.
Tooth brushes
stop where
nailbrushes begin.
But
Aunt Emma's
face does not
stop where
Cousin Emily's
begins, my
toothbrush does
hot stop where
my wife's
begins. That
is
the difference
between percept
and concept, class
member
and class.
Concepts are
delimited in
terms of one
another, percepts
only in
terms of
themselves.
Concepts are like the counties on a state map, in several ways. Where one stops, another starts. Although each is composed of so many acres and contains so many individuals, none is merely the sum of the acres that compose it or the people who inhabit those acres. Each of them has its place with respect to the others. The same with con cepts. Percepts inhabit concepts, ,but concepts are not the sum of their percepts. Aunt Emma's latest hat, a percept, belongs to the concept hat and not the concept mountain; the Sugarloaf, a percept, belongs to the concept mountain and not the concept distribution curve. It is not because of its individual characteristics that Ido not expect to fmd the Sugarloaf on Aunt Bmma's head ; it is because I know that the Sugarloaf is a mountain and mountains do not belong on people's heads. When Isee the Sugarloaf for the first time,I'do not have to work out from scratch all the properties it has, including that of not being on Aunt Emma's head; all those properties follow auto matically once I have determined that it is a mountain. Mountains have their place on the map, and so do hats; and those places are different.
But how, on first seeing its picture, did I recognize that it was a mountain (albeit a rather small one) at a distance, rather than a large if rather eccentric hat, up dose? Not by computing its peculiar proper ties. If I had, I could have gone wrong, because in outline it is less like the archetypical mountain than it is like some hats. I did so by putting two things together: the fact that it fulfilled at least some of the qualifications for being a mountain together with its relations to other objects: a harbor, clouds, a cable-car line to its summit. Of course, it could still have been a hat in a Lilliputian model city; just as the deer the hunter shot at could have been (and in fact was) a
232 ROOTS OF LANGUAGE
fellow-hunter. The fact that our maps may occasionally let us down does not mean we could get along without them. We would be no where without them.
If percepts could be filed fractured, so to speak, concepts must
be filed as gestalts. I do not have the slightest idea how this is done, nor to the best of my knowledge has anyone else, although neurologists will quite likely find out in the next century or two. However, since speculation is usef ul if only to provide candidates for elimination, let us speculate. Having been stored one way as percepts, in a manner based on their immediate sensory images, phenomena would be copied and stored another way in accordance with their observed behavioral properties. Did they lie still or move? If they moved, did they soar, lope, or slither? These heterogeneous bundles of information would again, presumably, be stored in sets of neurons synaptically linked with, and as specialized in function as, those sets of perceptual neurons that distinguish movement from nonmovement, loping from slithering, and the smells characteristic of one set of phenomena from the smells characteristic of another set. However, instead of the same set of neurons representing similar aspects of the images of quite different things, as we supposed was the case in the storage of percepts, separate
sets of sets, involving heavy duplication of function, would be required
ORIGINS 233
a patch of dappled light, motionless, at a certain height above ground in a forest at dawn-the superset from which that subset is drawn would immediately be activat.ed in such a way as to yield the full concept deer, in this case. The subject has then "seen" a deer, or whatever, and reacts accordingly.
This account is, again, necessarily crude, necessarily vague what constitutes a "sufficient subset of features" for concept trig gering, for instance ?-and quite possibly wrong in most or all of its particulars. It is crude, vague, and possibly wrong because, as Blake more (1977) observed, studies of memory (and allied human capacities) have been "concerned with the machinery . . . not the code-the sym bolic form in which the events are registered" (original emphasis); by "machinery," Blakemore means "the manner in which events can cause changes in physical structures," but the kinds of changes likely to be caused by the mental processes we are considering, consisting as they would consist of no more than the forging of additional links between specialized neurons, would hardly be amenable to observation in the state of today's technology (ten billion neurons with sixty thousand connections each-where do you start to look?). It is crude, vague, and possibly wrong because neurologists have considered the more "meta physical" implications of their task as somebody else's business, be-
for each. network of neurons that represented a concept.
cause
"contm. m.sts,, of
the grunt-groan-or-gesture school have thought
If this were so, it would explain why, while percepts may be stored in literally infinite quantity, the list of concepts, or at least the list of primitive concepts, is certainly finite and probably quite short (of course, an infinite number of secondary concept s-timber wolf, prairie dog, etc.-can be constructed by combining two or more primitive concepts). It would also explain why the human recognition device works as it does. Each superset of concept-representing neurons would include representations of all features of a concept. If indeed the major genera constituted the first concepts (and there would seem to be no likelier candidates), this would mean in effect all features of a genus-sensory , behavioral, distributional, whatever. Then whenever any sufficient subset of features is dtected by the perception neurons-
that the nature of reality is self-evident and therefore didn't need to be constructed, and because philosophers, who alone could be expected to perceive the problems inherent in perceiving anything at all, have resolutely refused to tie their ballooning speculations down to the nuts and-bolts of what we already know about what we have in our heads and what we might be expected to be able to do with it. So the whole area slipped between the cracks of the disciplines. But that area still exists, and is crucial in the explanation of human capacities, so a bad map is better than no map at all.
These last few pages may seem to have taken us a long way from language, but I do not think that is the case. Unless we have some
234 ROOTS OF LANGUAGE
notion of all that must have been involved in moving from moment-by moment perceptions to class concepts-and it is class concepts that are named, not perceptions, percepts, or the extramental stimuli for these then we simply do not know what it entailed for a species to get language. Moreover, until we appreciate just how difficult it must have been to name the major genera-the flora and fauna, successful inter action with which was our ancestors' very lifeline-we shall not even begin to conceive the role which is played by the perceiving mechan ism, rather than the perceived data, as progressively more abstract phenomena are involved. We will come to that in a moment.
But before we do, we should note that if the foregoing account
is correct even in its broadest outlines, we have already suggested an infrastructural motivation for one of the major semantic distinctions observed in the preceding chapters (the SNSD). We saw that both creole speakers and children were able to distinguish with great ease between specific and nonspecific (generic) reference. Now, if percepts-images of particular entities on particular occasions, therefore specific-and concepts-images of classes of entities, therefore nonspecific- are stored in different places and in different ways, this distinction would be built into the neural system. In consequence, something which seems highly
ORIGINS 235
impressive than wh.at
they
were trained
to do.
The fact
that they applied
.names to
different-looking objects
of the
same class,
as well as
to pictures
of such
objects, and
their frequent
generalizations of
names to
broader classes,
shows that
to them,
names were
class names
on_cpt
label_s-and not
mechanical responses
linked
to particular,
md1viual
objects
after the
fashion of
proper names.
The fact
that they mvented
names for
classes of
objects whose
names they
had not been
taught-for
refrigerators (open-eat-d
rink),
for ducks
(water-bird
)
for Brazil
nuts (rock-berry),
for oranges
(orange-apple):
Sarah kne
only "apple"
as a
fruit descriptor
but had
orange separately
as a
co lor)-shows
tht
they _had
far more
concepts floating
around in
their heads
than their
caregivers had
the time
or patience
to name
for them and
also showed
power of
creativity on
a lexical
(nonsyntactic) level'
a fact
we will
return to
in due
course.6 '
With reg?t:he . e?endence of this power from anything you could call trammg, 1t 1s worth citing a passage from Mounin ( 976):. "Sarah, all alone in her cage (outside any experimental situa t10n) picked up objects or signs and composed utterances on the
mode.ls. of the stru.ctures she had J'ust learned . . . . can one d1' scern the
tranltlo of the main and primary function of her code, social com mumcat10n, to a secondary use of it, the possibility of developing
abstract and far beyond the powers of two-year-olds, if we suppose it
to be acquired in the traditional fashion, would apply automatically
provided that no alternative but incompatible distinctions (such as
foh"r oneself ·the expression of one's own view of the world?. t is expression only represent play?" (emphasis added).
This
passage
r.om
P<>
vPry
cl0e
tn
blin
din
R
or does
those i1wolved ln Japanese cas.:: and topk marking, for cXa.i!.iplb) wet
simultaneously ben1g iu1po»eJ 011 the .::hil-1 by he lans:iagc:. Indeed, I shall later suggest that it was just those category distinctions based on sharply differing modes of cerebral coding and storage which were the first to be grammaticized, and which were thus to serve as
manages_ to get things the wrong way around . Mounin is right; 0£ coure, n that the Premacks. taught Sarah her code for strictly com mumcatlve purposes, so that 1f she turned it to private, computational
?urposes, that use would be secondary in a rather narrow sense. But
in a much broader, evolutionary sense, things were the other way
a kind of scaffolding by which language was able to rise from an initial
a£ro11und. Possession of an elaborated world-view must
precede, not
low plateau of short and relatively structureless utterances.
Now, from recent experimentation, we know that the power to abstract concepts from nature is something that we share with the great apes. As Mounin (1976), among others, has pointed out, the evidence of what chimps did voluntarily, after training, is much more
o ow, communication on even the lowest of linguistic levels. Sarah and Sarah's species must already have had an interior world of con cepts, not of percepts, or they would have been unable to transfer names from one object to another, still less from one class to another.
236 ROOTS OF LANGUAGE
Moreover, a name like Washoe's rock-berry (for Brazil nut) is a meta phor at a level appropriate for barroom joking, if not poetry ; it shows awareness of a superclass of which both berries and nuts are members, and the sharing of an abstract quality-hardness, not normally asso ciated with that superclass-by nuts and a member of another, non vegetable superclass. The coiner of such expressions has a cognitive map of no mean quality.
A further telling, if oblique, bit of evidence for this claim comes
from Gill and Rumbaugh (1974), who report that it took Lana 1,600 trials to learn the names for banana and M&M , but that the next five items were acquired in less than five trials each-two of them in two only. This stunning and instantaneous increment is inexplicable in terms of Lana's having "learned how to learn" in the course of those 1,600 trials; learning curves just don't jump like that. It is much more plausible to suppose that for a long time Lana simply couldn't figure out what her trainers were trying to do, and then suddenly it clicked: "My God, they're feeding me concept names-why couldn't they have told me, the dummies?" The concepts had been there all the while, and only the link between them and these mysterious new things that people were doing to her needed to be forged.
Finally, Mounin's use of or and only is a striking example of anthropocentric, or perhaps I should say Puritan business ethic, modes of thinking. On the one hand, you have "developing for oneself the expression of one's own view of the world," an activity automatically assumed to be solemn, to be heavy, to be work , in fact; therefore, on the other hand, something that is play couldn't possibly be "de veloping for oneself . . . ," etc. Piaget (1962) came nearer the bone when he claimed that the symbolic function arises first in play, and anyone who has watched a young mammal exploring the environment for the first time knows that "play" and "building a cognitive map" are isomorphic activities (young lizards don't play because they don't have the spare brain cells). It may look like "mere play" to the super cilious human observer, and indeed it is play-the animal wouldn't do it if it weren't fun-but it is also +he means by which lower creatures
ORIGINS 237
as well
as human
children set about
constructing the
mental representa
tion of
the world
which gives
them varying
degrees of
predictability
and thus enables them to control to a greater extent their own chances of survival.
Now, if chimps can have concepts and label them just as we have concepts and label them, and if we know (or are reasonably sure) that we have a common ancestor in Dryopithecus, then we can begin to get some kind of evolutionary perspective on the development oflinguistic infrastructure. When we find behavioral homologies in closely related species, we can reasonably assume that these homologies represent a common inheritance from a common ancestor (Campbell and Hodos 1970; Hodos 1976;Dingwall 1979:Figure 1.4). This would mean that the power to conceptualize and the potential for naming go back at least as far as Dryopithecus and maybe further back than that. In a moment I will try to answer the fascinating question that everyone must want to ask at this point: "Why , if language is so spectacularly
ap;ie, and if the basic infrastructure has been around for so long, dtdn t It develop millions of years sooner?" But first, there is more to be said about the problems of conceptualization and naming.
We began by tackling the infrastructure of language at just that point where the gap between language and the external world was most easily bridged ; where the classes to be named were at least classes of
discrete ·entities. Let us now turn from entities to their attributes and in particular to color. '
Color is not something that really exists in the external universe. We have all seen the landscape "change color" as the sun declines with"
out tinkingit .at ::U odd r stopping to remember that the purpling of
noor S green hills IS due sunp!y to the shortening of the Wavelengths oflight reflected from them. Coler is simply created bv the interaction between those wavelengths and sets of specialized pe;ceptor neurons, longer wavelengths appearing as red, slightly shorter ones as orange, and so on .across the spectrum. But color vision adds vet another set
of parameters to those that are already sorting percpts into their
238 ROOTS
OF
LANGUAGE
appropriate . classes. The boundary between two colors, for instance, is often a boundary and sometimes perhaps the only boundary between another entity and its background.
Useful
though
color
vision
is,
it
presents
serious
problems
for
language,
problems
of
a
kind
quite
different
from
those
inherent
in
the
naming
of
the
species
or
genera.
Creatures
are
discrete;
the
spec
trum
is
one
and
continuous.
We
can
perceive
light
at
wavelengths
of
between
roughly
380
and
800
millimicrons,
and
we
can
perceive
it
equally
well
at
any
wavelength
within
those
limits.
It
is
true
that
we
can
say
of
some
colors,
"that's
a
real
green,"
or
"a
true
yellow,"
but
there
are
points
in
between
where
we
cannot
say
whether
green
or
yellow
is
involved.
If
Og
and
Ug
had
sat
down,
as
in
some
of
the
more
simplistic
Flintstone
scenarios,
with
a
bunch
of
different-colored
pebbles
to
help
them,
maybe,
and
started
out
to
"name
the
colors,"
they
would
have
been
stymied
from
the
word
go.
Even
more
sophisticated
accounts
which
would
still
assume
some
degree
of
arbitrariness
and
voluntary
control
in
naming
run
up
against
the
insuperable
obstacle
that
words
demand
concepts,
and
concepts
demand
boundaries;
hut
colors
have
no
boundaries,
so
theoretically
you
should
be
free
to
cut
up
the
spec
trum
into
as
many
chunks
as
you
fancy
and
draw
the
lines
between
them
just
where
you
feel
like
drawing
them.
In
fact,
as
Berlin
and
Kay
(1969)
demonstrated
in
their
pioneering
study,
nobody
is
free
to
do
any
u
rh
thing.
Basic
mlor
terms
(terms
neither
borrowecl
from
names
of
ore-existinP-
obi<'cts,
0mn<Je
,
nor
comoounded,
e.g..
dark
qreen,
yellowish
brc;wn,
etc.-that
is
t
say,
primitive
concepts)
are
highly
predictable
across
languages,
and
the
semantic
range
of
each
term
is
determined
by
the
number
of
terms
in
any
given
language
system
and
by
the
ranges
of
pre-existing
terms
(if
this
sounds
familiar,
remember
it
was
exactly
the
way
I
said
TMA
systems
were
structured,
back
in
Chapter
3,
and
we
will
look
at
these,
too,
later
in
the
present
chapter).
This
is
to
say
that
if
a
given
language
has
only
two
basic
color
terms,
those
terms
must
be
"dark"
and
"light";
if
it
has
three,
they
can
be
only
"dark,"
"light,"
and
"red";
and
so
on.
ORIGINS 239
. The neurological substrate of this structuring of color has been explamed (McDaniel 1974; Kay and McDaniel 1978) in terms of ering's "oponent" theory of color discrimination (Hering 1920; smce epenmentally confirmed for certain species of primates, cf. de Valois and Jacobs 1968). Primate brains, and those of some other orders, have various sets of perceptor neurons each adapted to different hands of the spectrum and activated only by stimuli that fall within
those wavelengths. One pair of sets monitors the ranges corresponding to red d green. One member of the pair hits its maximal firing rate when sttmulated by central red and its minimal firing rate when stimu lated by central green. The other member of the pair hits its maximal firing rate ':hen stimulated by central green and its minimal firing
ra e when stimulated by central red. Similar pairs deal in a similar way with yellow-blue and the light/bright versus dark/dull distinction.
The far-reaching implications of the Berlin and Kay discovery have yet to be absorbed by the scientific community. The conclusions eache in a summary by Clark and Clark ( 1977: 527) are fairly typical m their unrevealig, indeed inaccurate, nature: "The very physiology of the human visual system makes some colors more salient than others. Children find these colors eye-catching and easy to remem ber ·. · . There is more occasion to talk about salient colors and listeners assume that speakers are more likely to be talking about hem.
Color terminology is universal because the human visual system is universal."
Quite apart from it ch:itty, wasn't P"0rything-si: rle:::frer-all tone, and its evident confusion of perception with lexicalization, this passage makes a grave factual error. The whole point of the Berlin and Kay thesis is that color terminology is NOT universal. If the color systems of languages reflected universalities of the human visual system
then color terminology would always be the same and always me the same. But it is not and does not.
What happens in these languages that have only "dark" and "light"? Presumably speakers of these languages have the same visual system as everyone else, and presumably children learning these Ian-
240 ROOTS
OF
LANGUAGE
guages find red, yellow, blue, etc., as "eye-catching" as any other children. And if all the primary colors are equally salient, how is it that no language starts by distinguishing only green and blue, and then works its way back across to red in the opposite direction?
It is worth going into the structuring of color terms in some depth here as ' believe this structuring is paradigmatic of a number of other semantic areas, some of them much more important than that of color.
First,
and
contra
Clark
and
Clark,
there
is
no
simple
one-to-one
relationship
between
neurological
equipment
and
semantic
structure.
Rather,
the
nature
of
neurological
equipment
enables
semantic
struc
ture
to
be
divided
up
in
a
number
of
possible
ways.
At
the
same
time,
it
prohibits
semantic
structure
from
being
divided
in
an
infinitely
greater
number
of
ways,
any
of
which
might
seem
a
priori
no
less
logical
or
possible,
and
imposes
rigid
constraints
on
the
sequence
in
which
any
given
analysis
of
the
semantic
structure
can
be
rendered
more
complex.
Let us look at some prohibited color terms. No language has the term *reen meaning 'red and/or green, but nothing in between', or the term *yellue meaning 'yellow and/or blue, but nothing in between'. There would seem to be no a priori reason for the absence of these terms, for it is easy to construct not only meanings but also possible neuroloical substrates for them. Thus, *reen would be the represen tation of activity in the red-green receptors (and no others), while
*yellue would be the representation of activity in the blue-yellow receptors (and no others). However, we know that lexicalization does not simply represent outputs of particular neuronal sets, for two reasons. First, many languages have a term equivalent to grue 'green and/or blue', which represents partial outputs of two opponent sets, rather than the full output of one opponent set. Second, the factor that allows grue to exist, while blocking *reen, seems to be perceived spatial contiguity, which of course corresponds to wavelength con" tiguity. Green and blue are contiguous on the spectrum; red and green,< or yellow and blue, are not.
ORIGINS 241
It
has
often
been
noted
that
spatiotemporal
contiguity
is
a
condition
on
naming;
no
language
has
a
word
such
as
*larm
meaning
'leg
and/or
arm',
or
*shee
meaning
'shoulder
and/or
knee';
in
no
lan
guage
can
I
say,
*I
teach
on
mwidays
meaning
'I
teach
on
Mondays,
Wednesdays,
and
Fridays'.
However,
a
further
look
at
color
terms
will
show
that
spatiotemporal
contiguity,
although
a
necessary
condition
on
naming,
is
not
a
sufficient
condition.
If
it
were,
some
languages
would
have
a
word
*yeen
meaning
'yellow
and/or
green'
instead
of
grue.
Yellow
and
green
are
just
as
much
contiguous
as
green
and
blue.
Their
conjunction
would
mean
conjoining
the
outputs
of
two
oppo
nent
sets,
but
the
same
is
true
of
green
and
blue.
There would seem to be two possibilities. Grue conjoins the two short-wavelength outputs of two opponent sets: *yeen would conjoin the long-wavelength output of one opponent set (yellow) with the short-wavelength output of the other (green). Perhaps one kind of conjunction can be lexicalized and the other cannot; we simply do not know enough to say. But it is also possible that what can be lexicalized at any given stage of development may be constrained by the order in which lexicalization takes place.7
This brings us inevitably to the much deeper question: why were the basic color terms added to human language in just the order that Berlin and Kay showed them to be? The answer may lie in a suggestion of potentially immense explanatory power first made by Stephenson (1973) but not, to the hest of mv knowledge, s11hfl!'!J11ently deeloped: that the Berlin and Kay sequence of dark/light-red-green/
yellow-blue may reflect the order in which color perception became established phylogenetic ally.
The argument, although hard to support from empirical studies species representing the appropriate evolutionary stages may all be extinct-is nevertheless a highly plausible one. Stephenson points out that mammals were originally nocturnal and could probably only make
hter-darker distinctions; as they began to shift to diurnal habits, after the extinction of major reptilian predators, the perce ption of light-wavelength distinctions became selectively advantageous (it
242 ROOTS OF LANGUAGE
would permit a much sharper and finer differentiation of the environ ment ). Stephenson argues that such perception would have begun with the longer wavelengths.
The transfer from the phylogeny of perception to the phylogeny
of language would then have come about in the following manner. In any line of development, neurological structure is always incremental; no species sloughs off its neural inheritance in the act of adding new layers; the new layers are simply superimposed on the old ones.8 It follows that older layers have a longer time in which to establish themselves, to multiply numbers cells and cell connections. This process is likely to be halted or reversed only if the related capacity becomes dysfunctional to a species-which color perception is unlikely to do unless our species is forced back to a nocturnal pattern. Thus, other things being equal, the older of any two capacities should be the stronger. The greater neural strength of the oldest-the light-dark distinction-would then lead to its being first lexicalized; the neural strength of the next oldest-long-wavelength (red) perception- would lead to its being second lexicalized , and so on.
I shall therefore propose the following hypothesis: those seman
tic
distinctions
whose
neural
infrastructure
was
laid
down
first
in
the
course
of
mammalian
development
will
be
the
first
to
be
lexicalized
and
/or
grammaticized
in
the
course
of
human
language
development.
In
the
present
state
of
our
knowledge,
such
a
hypothesis
can
have
only
a
tentative
status;
yet
we
will
see,
when
we
consider
the
possible
lution
of
TMA
systems,
that
it
can
still
have
considerable
power.
After red, languages can lexicalize either yellow (next wavelength
down from red, also the "high" member of the next color-opponent set) or green (the "low" member of the set already activated). It ma be that herein lies the reason for the absence of *yeen. If one or the other member of *yeen must be individually lexicalized, then a large category consisting of just those members cannot subsequently be constructed: lexicalization proceeds unidirectionally toward an eve finer dissection of the color area, so that while existing categories
ORIGINS 243
may be split, they can never be added to or collapsed. But again, research into the color vision capacities of more species of primates may clarify the situation by demonstrating a phylogenetic order of acquisition for the shorter wavelengths too.
We should also look at how the meaning of individual terms is affected by sequential development of semantic subsystems since there is good reason here also to suppose that similar phenomena will be found elsewhere. In their original (1969) treatment, Berlin and Kay referred to "dark" and "light" as "black" and "white." Indeed, "black" and "white" is what these terms shrink to in an eleven-term system like that of English where other terms have spread over most of the seman tic ground. Yet it should surely be obvious that as lexicalization pro gressively dissects semantic areas, the meanings of the earliest lexical items must change: "black," which originally embraces half the spec trum, must gradually reduce in scope until it eventually occupies only a narrow band of it. Similarly, "red" in a three-term system must include much-orange, maybe the darker yellows-which it cannot possibly include in the eleven-term English system, which contains orange, yellow, and pink as units. Thus, the semantic range of terms in subsystems is determined by the number of terms in such subsystems and by the semantic ranges of the other terms.
Constraints such as these will loom ever larger as we continue to traverse semantic space away from representations of concrete entities and toward representations of ever more abstract relationshi ps. So far. the semantic infrastructure we have dealt with is in all probability shared by Homo sapiens, Pan troglodytes, and Dryopithecus. I·doubt whether similar sharing extends to much or even any of the areas we are about to enter. Indeed, if we were reconstructing to a strict chrono logical timetable, we should probably drop semantics here and start talking about syntax, since from here on out, syntactic and semantic developments were almost certainly intercalated and their interaction served to drive language up along a beneficial spiral. However, in the interests of clarity of presentation, and to counteract the obsession with "communication" that has so far vitiated any understanding
244 ROOTS
OF LANGUAGE
of how language must have evolved, I shall continue to deal with semantic infrastructure (or rather with such small patches of it as there is space to deal with) in order to show just how much conceptual preadaptation was necessary before a "communicative system" as
simple as
the simplest
of early
creoles could
be made
to function
corn- .
municatively. Later
on, we
will retrace
our steps
to the
present point and
deal
with the
early development
of
syntax, relating
the latter,
wherever possible,
to concomitant
developments in
semantics already
touched on.
The first of the semantic areas I shall touch on concerns predica tions which may be felt to be central in any structured language sys, tern: There is an X , X is at Y, Z has X, X is Z's. I shall refer to the relationships expressed by these predications as Existence, Lc>ca.tl<m;>J'
Possession, and Ownership. Ishould emphasize that these labels
chosen only for convenience of reference and are not meant to nave <l!''. any particular semantic significance: "possession," for instance, is grossly inadequate for the semantics of has, which might better, though still inadequately, be defined as "stands in a close and superordinate relationship to."
In an original and insightful study, Eve Clark (1970) reviewed the ways in which these four relationships are represented across a sample of fifty-odd languages. She found a high degree of similarity in the syntactic structures involved, but a good deal less similarity in lexicalization. Some languages (indeed, almost half the sample) used only a single morpheme to lexicalize the entire area; others used four different items, i.e., lexicalized each of the four relationships differently. Between these extremes there were several different pate
terns, with
two or
three of
the relationships
being jointly
lexicalized, i
but seldom
the same
two or
the same
three from
one language
to the next.
Not surprisingly,
Clark concluded
that, in
this area,
the lexicon was
without internal
structure.
At first sight, an area such as this might seem to be affected by
constraints far different from those which would affect the area of ..
'
ORIGINS 245
body parts
or even
the more
abstract area
of color
terms. One
would not expect
to fmd,
for example,
contiguity constraints
of the
type that bar
items like
*yeen
and *shee,
since the
relationships we
are now talking
about do
not seem
to have
any discernible
concrete correlatives
of which
contiguity or
noncontiguity could
reasonably be
predicated. And yet,
contiguity constraints
exist here
too.
Consider Figure 4.2 below:
|
Ownership |
Location |
|
Possession |
Existence
- |
Figure 4.2
Semantic space for four relationships
If the four relationships are arranged spatially as in Figure 4.2, and if we consider only the primary (shortest, simplest, most frequently used) morphemes in each language-e.g., not allowing exist to sub-
. s*ute for there IS, or possess for have-the following constraint 'on exicalization seems to apply: no language can use the same mor pheme to express any two noncontiguous relationships (i.e., location and possession, or existence and ownership) unless that same mor· p}ieme is also used to express one of the intervening relationships
(l-e;, existence or ownership in the first case, location or possession
i1; thesecond). In other words, the semantic space mapped in Figure
·2
is as
structured as
real space,
and, as
with real
space, only
con- tiguous sectors
can be
jointly lexicalized.
This constraint
operates on all
the
languages i11
Clark's
sample, on
all creoles
for which
adequate
246 ROOTS OF
LANGUAGE
data are available, and for at least thirty other languages checked so far, or at least one hundred languages in total; Ihave not yet met with any counterexamples.
The reasons for the existence of such a constraint in this par. ticular case are far from obvious. The categories involved are not
highly abstract, but seem to be mutually inclusive. Species and co1or .'I terms are mutually exclusive: if something is a cat, it is not a dog; if something is red, it is not yellow or blue, and so on. If the semantic . space associated with species, color, and certain other areas is sh;arnhr. I divided, then such divisions can be regarded as no more than analogues
of divisions which exist in the material universe. But it is hard to see what real-world divisions would be correlates of the constraint go·vern• .I ing . the location-existence-possession-ownership area, since extst<mce '·l and possession (in the relational sense given aboveJ can be predicated
of all entities whether abstract or concrete, while location and owner- : ship can be predicated of all concrete (and perhaps some abstract) ·
ORIGINS 247
less apical environments -voi, +car), or in voiced velar or bilabial environments +voi, -<:or), or both. In the same way, semantic change could not spread from an environment which had minus values for two semantic primes to an environment which had pius values for those same primes without first affecting at least one environment
;\'hich had a minus value for one prime and a plus value for the other
prime.
An example can be found if we compare the article system of Modern English with the article system of Guyanese Creole, which is probably not much different from the article system of Middle English (the theory predicts that when an article system arises, it will be governed by similar constraints irrespective of whether it arises in a creole system or elsewhere). The Guyanese system is shown in Figure 4.3 below:
entities. So
why should it
not be
possible to
conjointly express
locat1<m and
possession, or
existence and
ownership, given
that any
other µairs.
:
any triples,
or
all four
together may
be conjointly
expressed?
Ican think of two possible explanations, not necessarily
ally exclusive.
Both explanations
involve principles
of broad,
mueeu universal,
application. As
yet, Iknow
of no
way in
which these
natives could be
tested.
The first explanation involves semantic primes. The term se1nai1·
r di ---- -- ---l
I I I I
I
I
.L
r -- --- - wan - 1
I
+P
+S
"Definite''
-P
+S "Indefinite" +P
-S -P
-S "Generic'' Other
I
I I I I I
.l..
tic prime is normally used in reference to unanalyzable concepts; hfl'"" <o Iuse it in a rather different sense, to refer to a very limited set binary oppositions; any concept can then be defmed in terms of
and minus (and perhaps null) values for these oppositions, in
the same way as phonological units can be defined in terms of mu>,.
and minus
values for Jakobsonian
distinctive features.9
Semantic change would then proceed in a manner ana10:guu• to phonological change. A phonological change cannot spread voiceless velar or bilabial environments ( -voi, -cor) to vo1ce1J , apical environments +voi, +car) without frrst occurring in
'
T T
I
I
I I
l I
t I
L------
-----
-----------
Figure 4.3
Semantic space for Guyanese articles
248 ROOTS OF LANGUAGE
ORIGINS 249
In Figure 4.3, "definite" and "indefinite" have their traditional mean· ings; "generic" refers to the subject NP in The dog/ A dog/Dogs is/are
(a) mammal(s), and "other" includes NP in the scope of negation, "a book or books," and similar cases (see Chapters 1 and 2 for a more; detailed analysis of the creole system ). It was claimed earlier in this chapter that the specific-nonspecific distinction had as its cerebral foundation the differential storage of percepts and concepts; if this is so, then the SNSD must represent one of the oldest (phylogenetically
speaking) of semantic primes. If it is old, it must (by the infrastructural
r i
I
I
I
I
I I I
I
the
T T I
---- --------,
I
+P
+S
"Definite"
-P
+S
"Indefinite" +P
-S -P
-S
'Generic 0th.;:r
I I I
I
I
I ,..
I I
I
I
I I
I
I
hypothesis proposed
in our
discussion of
color terms)
be strong,
and . this
superior strength
may
accoun t
for the
config1m1tion
of
Fi!]iur
4.3. Although the SNSD divides the entire semantic area, with "zero" on one side and "some marker or other" on the other, the presupposed-; nonpresupposed distinction (presupposed in this context refers to "information presumed shared by speaker and listener") divides only the +specific area. Now, there is no a priori reason why the latter distinction should not divide the entire area; generics are +P because everyone can be assumed to know class names, while "other" is -P because no one can be expected to know which was the dog that X DIDN'T see or which was or were the book or books that Y might have bought. But, as we saw with colors, semantic infrastructure tells you where lines MAY, but not where lines MUST, be drawn between lexicalizable areas of meaning.
One feature of Figure 4.3 is that there is no overlapping of the territory of different lexicalizations; there is no such thing in GC as a sentence in which you could change the article of any NP without simultaneously changing the meaning. This generalization does not, of course, apply to English. In The dog is a mammal you may change the article to anything you like without materially affecting meaning, and sentences such as there are no cows here and there isn't a cow here are synonymous. In fact, we may compare the GC situation shown in Figure 4.3 with the English situation shown in Figure 4.4 on the following page:
I I I I
I
I I
I
I
I I I I
I 1 I \
I
1 I
I
I
I
I L-
--
-
-
---
---1 I
I
a I
I
I 1
-
--
-
-------.J
I
' -
-- -
--
L------------
Figure 4.4
Semantic space for English articles
Here, the
has spread
from +P
+S to
+P -S,
on the
basis of
both "defi
nite" and
"generic" being
+P, while
has spread
from -P
+S +P
-S,
Lut
only by
virtue of having
first spread
to -P
-S,
on the
basis of
both "indefinite"
and "other"
being -P;
of course,
once a
has
r.eached
"other "
it can
then spread to
"generic" on
the basis
of their
both being .
In other
words, a
contiguity constraint
similar to
that goven
mg Figure
4.2 obtains,
preventing "definite".
an.d
"other,''.
or "m
a :o
,lcfinite" and "generic,'' from being jointly lex1cal1zed unless mterme-
,liate categories are also jointly lexicalized. . . .
A similar spreading process of individual lex1cal1zat10.ns cross semantic space could account for the variable ranges of lexical items
250 ROOTS OF LANGUAGE
ORIGINS
in
the
location-existence-possession-ownership
area.
Let
us
make
the
same
assumption
for
that
area
as
we
made
for
articles:
that
the
con
figuration
that
emerges
in
creoles
is
the
primary
configuration
whenever
articles
appear
(including,
of
course,
in
the
original
development
of
human
language
as
well
as
in
the
development
of
every
existing
natural
language).
Then
the
primary
configuration
for
the
location,
etc.,
area
will
be
as
shown
in
Figure
4.5
below:
|
Ownership (a) |
Location (de) |
|
Possession (get) Existence (get) |
|
Figure
4.5
Semantic space for location, etc., in GC
The fl'semhlance to th P rnnfigurati nn of Figure 4 1 nhvious. Again, two semantic areas are jointly lexicalized, while the remaining two are separately lexicalized. Again, as with Figure 4.3, we know that the pattern illustrated is one that is followed by most, perhaps all, creole languages, and one that cannot be explained by appeal to the structures of the languages that were in contact at the time the creoles came into existence. If this represents the primordial pattern, then those languages which separately lexicalize all four relationships would have reached that state by dividing and separately lexicalizing the tw lower quadrants, while those that jointly lexicalize three or even four quadrants would have reached that state by procedures similar to thos
which spread the and a to the second and third quadrants, respectively, but without at any stage of the process jointly lexicalizing noncon · tiguous quadrants.
However,
it
remains
to
identify
the
semantic
primes
by
virtue
of
which
the
contiguity
constraint
is
maintained
in
the
domain
of
Figures
4.2
and
4.5.
Clearly,
the
specificity
prime,
dominant
in
article
systems,
cannot
be
involved,
for
any
entity
must
be
marked
as
+specific
before
it
can
have
existence,
location,
possession,
or
ownership
pre
dicated
of
it.
However,
there
is
evidence
that
presupposedness,
the
next
prime
down,
so
to
speak,
may
be
crucially
involved.
Entities
of
which
location
.
and
ownership
can
be
predicated
must
be
assumed
known
to
the
listener:
compare
the
desk
is
in
a
comer
with
*a
desk
is
in
a
comer,
or
compare
the
briefcase
is
mine
with
*a
briefcase
is
mine.
On
the
other
hand,
entities
of
which
existence
and
possession
can
be
predicated
must
be
assumed
unknown
to
the
listener;
thus,
we
have
there
is
an
answer
versus
*there
is
the
answer,10
and
I
have
a
cold
versus
*I
have
the
cold
(the
fact
that
the
latter
sentence
is
grammatical
under
contrastive
stress,
as
in
(It's)
I
(that)
have
the
cold
,
not
Mary
,
is,
of
course,
completely
beside
the
point).
I
Perhaps less clear here is exactly what the second prime in volved is. I shall suggest, very tentatively and provisionally, some- 1thing Ishall call "relatedness. " A claim that something exists entails
no claim that that something is significantly related to anything else;
'ltmilarly, a daim that something is }optPrt snmewherl' l'nt nils no daim that there is any significant connection between that c:.ome thing and its location. However, claims of possession and ownership ttivolve a substantive link of some kind, whether genetic (Bill has children, those children are Bill's), creative (Mary had an idea, that idea was M ary's), or of some other nature. We could then illustrate temantic primes and their interrelationship as in Figure 4.6 on the
owing page:
252 ROOTS O.f LANGUAGE
ORIGINS 253
All entities
IS INTERESTING
IS THOUGHT ABOUT
---
---
-
--.love
fear
-S -----+-S-------
IS
N
EA
RBY IS
ABOUT
X
IS
AT
THE
CORNER IS
TRUE
I
+P
(the) -P
(a)
+R -R +R -R (ownership) (location) (possession) (existence)
'....., -
......
story
IS
AN
HOU
R
LONG
\--
-.
-
_
thuderstorm
idea
(R = related)
Figure 4.6
IS RED HAPPENED YESTERDA Y IS HEAVY
I ,.,,,
IS ON l'URPOSE
IS X'S FAULT
',,
sunr1se
Hypothetical tree structure for semantic primes
This would enable us to define ownership as +P +R, location as
+P -R, possession as -P +R, and existence as -P -R. If this were the case, no lexkalization could spread directly from ownership to exis tence (or vice versa) or from location to possession (or vice versa), since in either case the process would involve simultaneously reversing the
polarity of two semantic primes. The observed facts for this area
IS TALL
IS
SKINNY
I
IS DEA D IS SICK
OF BOXES
IS FIXED
IS BROKEN
'',
'
',milk
water
...._ ......, car
''..... ....... fight
.... kiss
would
thus
be
fully
accounted
for.
I
However, doubts about the status of "relatedness" -which does not appear to figure crucially in any other semantic area, unlike pre
supposedness- may make it worthwhile to consider an alternative
IS
W
ILTED
BLOOM
S
-- -
... refrigerator
-.. -....., ... flower
explanation for
these facts.
A slightly different kind of contiguity constraint has recently been claimed by Keil (1979, 1981). The constraint envisaged by Keil derives from a structure which he terms a "Predicability Tree." A predicability tree defmes the range of different predication types
over various semantic classes of NP (see Figure 4.7 on p. 253). Each
IS ASLEEP IS HU NGRY
ISIHONEST ---
tree
Figure 4.7
predication
type
ranges
only
over
those
classes
of
NP
which
it
domi
nates
in
the
structure.
Thus,
predications
such
as
X
is
interesting
and
X
is
thought
about
can
be
made
of
any
class
of
NP,
while
at
the
'
IS SO.R.,_RY
',
man
...
...... girl
The predicability tree
(from Keil 1979:Figure 1)
254 ROOTS OF
LANGUAGE
furthest extreme, predications such as X is honest and X is sorry can be made only of the class of NP that is +animate, +human.
Keil's predicability
tree is
based on
work by
Sommers (1959,
1963,
etc.), which
first pointed
out the
existence of
what Keil
calls "the
M constraint."
The M
constraint prevents
any pair
of predicates (A,
B) from
intersecting, i.e.,
A and
B "can
never span
terms in
com mon and
also have
terms that
just A
spans and
terms that
just B
spans" (Keil
1979:16).
It
also
follows from
this that
no predicate
can span two
noncontiguous .
sets of terms
unless it
also spans
all intervening
sets of
terms.
Experiments carried
out by
Keil with
children as
young as
kindergarten age
suggest that
the M
constraint is
unlikely to
be learned by
experience. Even
the youngest
children had
somewhat truncated
versions of
the predicability
tree,
and such
violations of
the M
con straint as
were found
tended to
support Keil's
hypothesis rather
than disconfrrm it.
For
example, children
who
claimed that
dreams were tall
(thereby apparently
violating
the hierarchy
of predicability
) re vealed
under further
questioning that
they believed
dreams to
be physical objects:
"They're
made
out of
rock," "They
just got
grass on them,'' "They
turn
white and go
up in
the sky"
were among
their answers (Keil
1979:110). Thus,
the violations
arose through
assignment of
"dreams"
to
an inappropriate
category, rather
than a
violation of the
hierarchy per
se. Since
children's output,
as we
have seen,
is any thing
but isomorphic
with their
input, it
cannot be
claimed that
the absence of
M-constraint violations
in their
speech is
merely a
reflex of a
similar absence
in adult
speech. There
would appear
to be
no way in
which they
could negatively
defme the
scope of
predications as
a result of
inductive processes;
thus, Keil's
results further
support the
argument of
Fodor (
1975),
referred to
at the end
of Chapter
3, that one could
not
learn the
extensions of
the predicates
of a
natural lan
guage unless
one already
knew the
extensions of
those predicates.
Although the M constraint is strikingly similar to the types
of contiguity
constraints that we
observed in
connection
with color terms
and the
area of
location, etc.,
it relates
to predication
(the
\
ORIGINS 255
establishment of a relationship between two lexicalizations) rather than delimiting the scope of lexicalization itself. Still, since have,. be, etc., and their cross-linguistic equivalents are indeed predications, it may be that the predicability hierarchy affects permissible lexicalizations within that semantic area. We noted above that existence and posses sion could be predicated of all things, and thus would include the entire tree in their scope; location, however, could only be predicated of classes dominated by the second node down (is nearby Iat the cor ner}, while ownership could only be predicated of classes dominated by the third node down (is red / heavy). Joint scope of existence and possession could therefore have favored their joint lexicalization, while the disjoint scopes of location and ownership would have favored disjoint lexicalization.
In the present state of our knowledge, there is no principled way
to choose between the two explanations. Those explanations, however, have served to show us other ways in which semantic space is struc tured, and suggest that the contiguity-constraint approach may yield a rich store of insights into the massive conceptual infrastructure that underlies, and that alone could make possible, the simplest "communi cative" uses of language.
Before turning back to survey the growth of the syntactic struc tures that were based upon that infrastructure, we should look at one last area of semantic space where contiguity constraints arising from semantic primes, rather than from the predicability hierarchy, appear to be operative. At the same time, problems that were deferred to the present chapter when we encountered them in Chapter 2 (in connection with creole variability in the treatment of iteratives) and again in Chapter 3 (in connection with variable treatment of iteratives by children) may now be dealt with.
This area can best be understood if we start from those problems. Readers will recall that although a majority of creoles (including Guyanese Creole, which here as elsewhere will be taken as representa tive) merge iteratives with duratives in a single nonpunctual category,
256 ROOTS OF
LANGUAGE ORIGINS 257
Jamaican Creole (and perhaps one or two others) treats iteratives th"". o(Thursdays or for any combination of Thursdays (provided that such same way as past punctuals, while Sao Tomense (and perhaps one or l' a combination did not equal the sum of all Thursdays) and still be
two others) treats iteratives the same way as futures (and perha s ·f.i
true. Let us suppose that John drives to work every Monday, Tuesday,
other members of the irrealis category--existing descriptions are t!o · . •••• Wednesday, and Friday, and also on a majority of Thursdays, but on inadequate for one to tell). ·• the remaining Thursdays, he walks to work. Then it is true that John
. Ch
As
was
sehen
in.
the
discussion
of
Bronckart
and
Sinclair
(19731
f....··.··•
walks
to
work
on
Thursdahys
(buht
nhot
on
Tuesdays,' Fdridays, etc.).
m apter 3, t ere is more than one way of looking at iteratives,c_ 1.Jvloreover, 1et us suppose t at Jo n as on1y ever waike to work on From one viewpoint, an iterative predication such as John walks ta'.'!.: 'otle Thursday. In that case, the sentence John does not walk to work
work r;;.nges over an ill-defined series of instances in which Johti;f . 'on Tlmrsdays is false and can be shown to be false by instancing the
alread has walked (and may be expected to continue to walk) to work;.. / fulitary occasion on which he did walk to work on a Thursday. If
Smee it does not represent a single event perceived as a unit (such an' · · that sentence is false, its converse, John walks to work on Thursdays, event. as might be represented by John walked to work last Thursday,; ; :111ust be true, no matter how uninformative or misleading it might sa ), tt can be reg:"ded as falling into the nonpunctual category along .; i>i ,appea:rto be.
with events perceived as extended and uncompleted processes (John< ';. } · It should b'e obvious then that predications of the iterative class
is/was
walking
to
work]. ··.••··.
.
":;·<lc:L
not
refer
to
events
in
the
same
kind
of
way
that
other
types
of
But,
from
another
viewpoint,
each
of
the
series
of
actions
over ;'..'\
i:edication
refer
to
them.
John
walked
to
work
last
Thursday
is
true
which John wal.k s to work ranges is itself an isolated event seen as a :c; Jfand only if John walked to work last Thursday, and John is wal.king
unit. If
one regards
the nature
of the
units in
the series
as primary, to
work.
today
is true
if and
only if
John is
walking to
work today. rather
than
the fact
that those
units constitute
a series,
then iteratives !
}n
fact,
we could
claim that
John
walks
to
work
on
Thursdays
does
can be
perceived as
falling into
the punctual
category. , ';'.not
refer at
all to
any specific
events, but
rather to
a generalized
con- From yet a
third viewpoint,
one can poin
t to
the fact
that while
;'' c;ept
which may
be based
on one
or more
such events.
Since the
realis sentences like
John
worked
yesterday
or John
is
working
today
refetc' ':'
category embraces
real events
in real
time, it
could be
concluded that
t specific occasions on which John worked or is working, sentences\; :/ jt tative "really" belongs in the irrealis category.
hke Jo;n works do not. A sentence such as John works may be true ; (.< ;:_lat· Th foegoing paragraphs constitute an informal acconnt of the even i John is not working now and even if John works consider- ¥i: ;re ions ip etween iterative and the nonpunctual, punctual, and
ably less than the average person. The key to the difference here lies :. P · ' irtalis categories. The question is now whether, in terms of well
mL· what it tkakes to establish the truth value of an iterative predication.: Z!i• iw!Qooutilvdamt_etd.ersemt tic prm,ies, wefcahn show formally hfow thos.e categories
et us
1oo a
11tt1e more c1ose1y at the problem of how we would \ .. . .. .. . ac m an anaiogue o t e re1evant area o semantic space.
assign truth value to the sentence John walks to work on Thursdays. :...• ''·''.'. .. The status of punctual-nonpunctual and realis-irrealis as semantic
We cannot falsify this sentence by pointing to a particular .;'pximes will be dealt with a little later on in this chapter, when we try Thursday on which John did not walk to work. But we would be wrong .to see whether the ordering of TMA markers can be accounted for in if we assumed that the sentence means "John walks to work on most ,· evo!Utionary terms. For the present analysis we need only these and Thursdays." Not only does it not mean this, but it is also the case that ' :;..Olli' o.ther pimary distinction which has already been independently the sentence could be falsified fr any individual member of any set< \.. stahhshed, i.e., specific-nonspecific. Predications like John works or
258 ROOTS
OF LANGUAGE
John walks to work may be regarded as having the same relationship to predications like John work ed yesterd ay or John is walking today as generic NPs have to particular-reference NPs, or as concepts do to percepts. In other words, habituals are -specific, while nonhabituals are +specific.
The SNSD thus crosscuts the area of semantic space which includes the punctual-nonpunctual and realis-irreafis distinctions. In order to adequately represent this situation, we would require a three dimensional model, but for convenience we will represent the SNSD as a square boundary within a larger square, as shown in Figure 4.8 on
p. 259. Since, as has been stated already, semantic infrastructure
determines where conceptual boundaries MAY, but not where they +P MUST, be drawn, the configuration of Figure 4.8 leaves the three
analyses of Figures 4.9(a), (b), and (c) (p. 260) as further possibilities. -P
Analysis (a) of Figure 4.9 corresponds to the Guyanese (major
ity
creole)
analysis;
analysis
(b),
to
the
Jamaican
Creole
analysis;
and
analysis
(c),
to
the
Sao
Tomense
analysis.
It
leaves
open,
of
course,
a
fourth
analysis:
that
of
English,
Yoruba,
and
a
number
of
other
languages
which
would
correspond
to
Figure
4.8.
In
this
analysis,
habituals
are
separately
grammaticized
{John
work
s)
from
continua
tives
(John
is
working),
punctuals
{John
worked
),
and
various
kinds
of
irrealis
(John
will
work
,
John
would
work).
It
should
be
noted,
however,
that
the
Romance
languages
in
general
follow
the
analysis
of
Figure
4.9(a),
the
majority
r:reolP:
an:ilyi:is,
ffH're1y
upon
it
the
past-non
past
distinction
:
Spanish
yo
trabtt}o
me:.UlR
'!
acm
ORIGINS
+R -R
(past)
+S
(conditional) +S (habitual) -S (future)
+S
(continuous)
+R -R
259
working' or 'I work', while yo trabajaba means 'I was working' or 'I worked (habitually)', and in consequence, yo trabaje is limited to 'I worked (punctually, on a particular occasion) '.
We now have a vague inkling · (probably little more than that, as it may turn out) of the coplexities of semantic space: a space that had to come into existence before language as we know it could be born. Some of that space was required for the very first, earliest, and simplest stages of language. Other parts, although they were not
(R = realis, P = punctual, S = specific)
Figure 4.8
Semantic space around habituals
260 ROOTS OF LANGUAGE
I I
I I I
$
1-'4
it
I
ORIGINS 261
immediately required,
probably came
into existence
prior to
the emergence of
language, as
we shall
see, but
were only
incorporated into
language as
language grew.
Yet other
parts may
only have
come into existence
subsequent to
the initial
stages oflanguage
development. However,
Isuspect
that such
parts, if
they exist,
will prove
to be
minor, and that
the common
notion, more often
implicit than
explicit (if made
explicit, it
is hard
to defend),
that language
bootstrapped its
way upward, creating
the conceptual
categories it
needed as
it grew,
pro ducing thought
, consciousness,
and volition
as
mere
epiphenomena, is
simply
false.
As Itry to develop the scenario of how a language based on the conceptual categories we have surveyed could have developed, Ishall incur a heavy debt to a seminal work in glottogenesis, Lamen della (1976). This paper represents the first systematic attempt to use the development of language in the child as a possible model for the development of language in the species. Lamendella claims that "on togeny manifests a repetition of several phylogenetic stages in the neurofunctional system that allows human infants to learn languages."
In his
case,
as in mine, "it strains credulity to pretend that language
as
we
know
it
suddenly
sprang
up
intact
as
a
cultural
invention
in
the
absence
of
extensive
cognitive
and
communicative
preadaptations"
(emphasis
added);
he
envisages,
accordingly,
a
series
of
hominid
species,
each
developing
a
particular
element
or
stage
of
language
and
then
transmitting
that
development
to
the
next
species
via
the
genetic
code.
I I
I ""I' ...
IZ I
Lamendella defends
the foregoing
model against
accusations of
Larnarckism by
pointing out
that in
all
species,
individual members
show differences
in their capacities.
Thus, at
any given
stage of
the development toward
full language,
relatively slight
differences in
the associated
capacities would
have conferred
a selective
advantage on their
possessors, so
that there
would have
developed "a
concentration
of genotypes producing [these capacities J in the gene pool of the species." Thus, the average capacity of the hominid line at stage n+l would have equaled the maximum capacity at stage n, and the bio-
'
262 ROOTS
OF
LANGUAGE
logical foundations of language would have been laid down, not in a single cataclysmic event, but in an ordered series of steps.
This series would then necessarily repeat itself in the course of child acquisition since, as Lamendella points out, "more recently en coded genetic information generally tends to unfold later in ontogeny so as to preserve the temporal sequence in which the new components of the genetic information code were laid down." Lamendella is careful to show that his claims do not fall under the two main criticisms to which early recapitulationist theories in biology were subject. First, he points out that "embryonic" stages of language may reproduce not the developmental stages of adult language but the language of children at corresponding stages. At any stage, adults using general purpose strategies might have developed language beyond the range of contemporary children, although without being able to transmit such developments via the genotype. Second, he is aware that embryological features do not always or necessarily occur in the same order as their corresponding evolutionary features, so that the developmental stages of child language do not necessarily occur in the same order as corre sponding stages in the original development of language.
With regard to this latter point I think that Lamendella is top cautious. Recapitulationist theory in general biology had to cover a very wide range of phenomena, many of which were only very re motely connected. Consider any pair of such phenomena, say, dentition and the structure of the foot in a given !':pecies. C'leli!rly, two things are not wholly unconnected since we do not normally fwd herbivores with claws or carnivores with hooves. However, within both herbivorous and carnivorous species there is quite a wide range of tooth and foot structures, detailed development of each of which must have proceeded with a good deal of independence from the other. It should therefore be unsurprising that on occasion the precise sequence of developments should have been shuffled somewhat between phylogeny and ontogeny-that, for example, in a given phylum, a certain type of tooth might have developed earlier than a certain type of foot, but that, in the embryonic forms of some contemporary species, that type
ORIGINS 263
f
foot might
develop earlier
than that
type of
tooth. However,
when we are
dealing with
the development
of language,
we are
dealing with a
very tight
subsystem of
neural structures rather
than with
a wide range
of quite
dissimilar physical
features; and
within such
a sub system,
a high
degree of
mutual interdependence
might be
expected to obtain.
We would
expect, therefore,
that reversals
of phylogenetic
ordering in the ontogeny oflanguage would be quite rare, ifindeed any . exist at all.
Ishall not examine in detail the stages that Lamendella proposes, which differ in some respects from those to be suggested here; his work was carried but from a slightly different perspective and his conclusions are worthy of study in their own right. Ishall return to the last of our speechless ancestors, whose cognitive equipment need not have differed in any material respect from that of the contemporary great apes.
Earlier in this chapter reference was made to the question why, if there was such massive preadaptation for language, it did not arise earlier. Attempts to account for this fact often take the form of simply pointing to the parlous stat of hominids expelled from an arboreal Eden and forced to compete with fitter predators; the compensatory advantage offered by language then seems self-evident. But evolution does not behave like the U.S. Cavalry ; if it did, it would surely have ridden to the 11:t>cue of orilla, now thrcate.n.ed tw.m: seriously by our species our was ever threatened hy Need
not create function unless that function is already within a species' grasp.
This view might seem to directly contradict the view expressed
earlier that intense interspecific competition may have rapidly ex panded the cognitive capacities of our species. In fact, there is no contradiction. Cognitive growth-the increase in the capacity of crea tures to analyze the environment and predict outcomes-has always been the major thrust of evolution, and to claim this is in no sense to be guilty of teleology, since the more cognitively developed any species
264 ROOTS OF LANGUAGE
becomes, the greater would be its chances of survival. Thus, the homi nid line may have been capable of a relatively rapid growth of cognitive capacity . precisely because there was already a broad evolutionary base to build on. But there could be no basis to build on with regard to language, since the kind of cognitive capacity hominids were only now building- the conceptual capstone, so to speak, on the vast arch of perception that had been building ever since the first microorganism responded to ligh t or to the touch of another-was the necessary prerequisite for the most rudimentary form of language.
Yet the question remains. If apes have adequate prerequisites for at least a fraction of what we have in the way oflanguage, then the probability is that Dryopithecus had similar prerequisites, and that gives a period of at least five million years in the pongid line, and x million years in the hominid line, in which the capacity for language existed, and the need for language existed, but there was no language.
Here we must consider the channel problem. However refined the conceptual schemata, however detailed and accurate the cognitive map that a species can construct, it will profit that species little (except in terms of individual survival) unless there is also a mode of expression. The only two modes of expression that seem to have even a chance of being viable for primates are the vocal and the manual. Without full cortical (consequently voluntary) control over one or another of these channels, language as communication would not have been possible.
However, the channel problem has quite another dimension, a dimension seldom referred to but equally critical. This dimension is, in fact, twofold. We will take the second half and then the fu:st half. The second half is: when A, the first hominid ever to use either a sound sequence or a gesture referentially, made such sequence or gesture to B, another hominid, how did B know that A was communicating referenti ally , and not merely coughing, clearing his throat, scratching himself, or brushing a fly away? The first half is: given the same situation, how did A, totally ah ovo, conceive the idea of represen ting some object or event in the environment in terms of a sound sequence or gesture-an act unprecedented since the Big Bang?
ORIGINS 265
These problems cannot be dismissed by hand-waving. Either language began as a consciously intended performance, in which case we have to show both how the intent could have been formed and how a conspecific could have grasped both the fact that there was an intent '."" the r ference. that was intended, or it began accidentally. Although it 1S no aim of this chapter to add to the already overlon" list of Plint stone scenaris, one of the (possibly numerous) ways in which language could have ansen accidentally is the following: Mrs. Og, breast-feeding a lusty one-year-old with one hand, is trying to feed herself with the other. Young Og, ready for a change of diet, makes a grab for the meat. Mrs. Og pushes him away. He tries harder, babbling in his frustra tion: gaga. His stubbornness amuses Mrs. Ug, sitting nearby, and she imitates gaga and maybe makes a playful grab for the meat. For a while after that, the favorite joke in the tribe is to creep up on somebody, hout gaga, and try and grab his or her meat. Perhaps it dies out, as jokes do. Perhaps words were found and lost and found again a score f times before they took root, or perhaps the slightly older kids picked
lt up and began to use it seriously when they got hungry or when they though t the grown-ups were dividing the food unfairly.
.or a slight variant on this: Ig, young Og's uncle, is pretending to be a tiger, an avuncular activity still widespread today and presumably of no very recent evolutionary history. Young Og withdraws in real or simulated fear, shouting wawa! Uncle lg imitates him, and again very.one laughs, but tigers are not evetyday occurrences, so the thing is qmckly forgot ten. But a couple of days later Ig sees a real tiger about to pounce on Og. By a sheer fluke he yells out wawa! instead of the regular alarm call, and Og saves himself in the nick of time. Maybe they and the rest of the band are able to kill the tiger, and dance and em brace. around its carcass like European soccer players after a goal, shouting wawa! And the word, perhaps soon followed by others of a
similar nature, gets incorporated into the earliest of human rituals; for, as Marshack (1976) insightfully observed, "Language, in fact, may have been as useful, or more useful, in this cultural realm than in the
comparatively self-evident strategies utilized in hunting, butchering and gathering."
266 ROOTS
OF
LANGUAGE
Many such
scenarios could be
elaborated, all
equally probable
(or improbable). How
the Rubicon
was crossed
is of
minor concern;
what matters is
how it
was reached
and what
happened after
it was
crossed. But origin
stories like
these which
feature Judie
and jocular
compo nents do
have some
advantages. First,
they do
not require
intent on
anybody's part,
and since
they do
not require
intent, they
do not require
understanding, at
least in
the everyday
sense of.
that term. Thus,
t.liey
neatly avoid
both halves
of the
understanding-intentionality
problem referred
to a
few paragraphs
earlier. Secondly,
they are
based on behaviors-
imitative and
joking behaviors-which
are independently
attested for
other members
of the
primate family
and which
therefore must have
been common
to all
our immediate
ancestors. Thirdly,
they provide an
element which
may be
essential in
the
acquisition of
lan guage anywhere
in the
universe: external
modeling.
It is
not, I
think, accidental
that chimps
did not
acquire language
until we
taught them.
It cannot
be the
case that
they lacked
the intelli
gence to
invent it,
since they
can use
it creatively
(within, admittedly,
quite narrow
limits) once
their pump
has been
primed, so
to speak.
It could be
that the
conceptual leap
is too
great to
be made
in
a single
stride by
any species-that
some kind
of external
model is
needed, whether
that model
is intentional
(as was
the case
with human
teaching of apes)
or unintentional
(by young
human children,
as in
the stories
above); otherwise,
the whole
idea
of referential
communication
would have
been just
too radical
to work
out (in
either sense
of work
out).
But if
this is
so, there
is a
channel block
for the
pongid line
that did not
exist for
the hominid
line.
In other primates, vocal outputs have not come under sufficient cortical control for the vocal channel to be viable for linguistic use; the great apes cannot suppress spontaneous vocalizations, have very little if any capacity for voluntary vocalization, and "show little or no ability to imitate sounds" (Dingwall 1979). But if hominids could have imitated and assigned meaning to the spontaneous vocalizations of children, why could not chimps or other primates have done the same with their own infants' spontaneous,gestures?
ORIGINS 267
If we replay the two scenarios given above with an ape cast, the reason will become obvious. Instead of gaga for 'meat' or more prob ably some more general 'food', you would have had some kind of grabbing motion. Instead of wawa for 'tiger' you would have had some kind of fear behavior.- Paradoxically, infant gestures could not have served as proto-words because they were not arbitrary enough. For the first signs to have had a narrow enough range to fit individual concepts, they must have had NO RANGE, have been quite empty, communi catively speaking, so that they could be filled by the particular refer ence of the immediate context, hy "food" or "tiger," as the case might be. You could not use a grabbing motion as a symbol for food because there were so many other things you might grab for. You could not use a fear gesture as a symbol for a tiger because there were so many other things you might be afraid of. But something that had no clear meaning for the parent, such as a child's pre-speech utterance, could be hooked to any of the hominid's preexisting concepts precisely because it lacked any such general associations.
There would be little point in spending so much time on the actual emergence point of language if the suggestions just given were not a logical outgrowth of all that we have already discussed. The major point of this chapter has been that language grew out of the cognitive system used for individual orientation, prediction, etc., rather than out of prior communicative systems. It would follow from this that the most likely means of expression, when this cognitive infra structure finally emerged as a communicative system in its own right, would have been one which was quite separate from, and unlikely to be confused with, the prior system. True, both hominid calls and hominid proto-words would have been in the vocal channel, but the acoustic ranges of the modern "call system"-shrieks, laughter, etc.
and those of speech sounds do not overlap and very likely have never overlapped.
Once the Rubicon was crossed, progress may well have been rapid, a matter of a few generations, since the necessary infrastructure for a fairly rudimentary level of language would have already been in
I
268 ROOTS OF LANGUAGE
place. Chimps
have progressed
(with training,
granted) from
one-word to several-word
utterances in
a matter
of months,
so Isuspect
that the one-word,
two-word, etc.,
stages of
early child
development do
not necessarily reflect
stages in
adult language
development, but
rather rehearse
cognitive growth stages
in the
hominid
line that
PRECEDED
the emergence
oflanguage. Not
a lot turns
on this,
either way,
and even how
we would
decide between
the two
alternatives is
at present
very far
from being
clear. But
somehow the
idea of
our ancestors
communi
cating via
one-word utterances
for
several millennia
while awaiting
the growth of
the requisite
neurological
infrastructure (whatever
that might
have been!) that would permit them to add word two to word one falls short of being wholly persuasive. In the absence of any evidence to the contrary (but bearing in mind the possibility that such evidence might appear at any time) we will conclude that in the first flush of language, our ancestors were able to get about as far as chimps have; that is, they could:
Lexicalize concepts
corresponding to
classes of
sensorily perceptible
entities and
sensorily perceptible
attributes of
entities (things
like color
and
size
as
opposed to
things like
courage
and
justice
).
Lexicalize secondary concepts by conjuncts of primary con- ·· cept names.
Organize brief (up to 3-5 word) utterances on a predominantly topic-comment basis (i.e., proceeding from the proximal to the distal, the old to the new, more or less irrespective of case role relations).
Despite (c), distinguish in a pinch between X-Vs-Y and Y-Vs-X sequences (e.g., form appropriately, and react appropriately to, the difference between Roger tick le Lucy and Lucy tick le Roger, in at least a majority of cases).
On the
other hand,
it is
likely that
they, in
common with
modern primates, were
not able
to: ,
ORIGI.t'l'S 269
Produce utterances of more than one clause.
Grammatidze even the most basic semantic distinctions, such
as those of tense, plurality, possession, etc.
. These two capacities are, as Ishall try to show, phylogenetically lmked. Together they constitute minimal requirements for anything even approaching the kind of language we have today, and the reluc tance of many linguists and psychologists to accept that, lacking them, modern apes could be capable of language, is very understandable. owever, such linguists and psychologists feel under no obligation to give an account of how language was initially acquired, which makes things easier for them, but does not do anything toward helping us to understand ourselves. What apes have, what our ancestors had, you may or my not all language, but it seems to me simply bizarre to suppose
that 1t wasn t smethmg that you had to have in order eventually to
have languages hke those of today. Those who disagree have no righ t to
d.o so. unless they can provide a more plausible route to our present s1tuat10n.
. . S.eidenerg and Petitto (1979), in reviewing (pessimistically) the h1stic achievements of apes, make the point that no convincing
evide?ce h"". ye.t beu prvided that an ape can use a sign for any object
that 1s not m 1ts immediate environment. This is equally true of chil dren's language in the first few months of acquisition, of course· and indeed, with only (a)-(d) as one's resources, it is hard to see 'how reference could escape from the prison of the here-and-now. But being able to talk, if only about the here-and-now, is an immense advantage
;•c for children, and was presumably at least an equal advantage for our forefathers, over not befog able to talk about anything at all. You culd convey. highly specific warnings, bring about cooperative beha v10r,. settle disputes, even construct primitive rituals. In rituals, dis placement begins; the head of the cave-bear on a pole stands for all
. ;··· the cave-bears who control the warm caves you will need in order to '" gt through the next Ice Age. But it is one thing to be able to think
·• displacement, and quite another to be able to talk it.
270
ROOTS OF LANGUAGE
Consider the following situation. You are Og. Your band has just
ORIGINS 271
its accuracy, degree of detail, and universality or lack of it. A language
severely wounded
a cave-bear.
The cave-bear
has withdrawn
into its cave.
Ug wants
to go
in after
it. "Look
blood. Bear
plenty blood.
Bear weak. Ug
go in.
Ug kill
bear. Ug
plenty strong."
You want
to be
able to say
something along
the lines
of the
bear
we
tried
to
kill
last
winter
had
bled
at
least
as
much
as
this
one,
but
when
lg
went
in
after
it
to
finish
it,
it
killed
him
instead
so
don't
be
such
an
idiot.
Since
in order to
think this
all you
had to
be able
to do
was to
replay the
memory of events
you yourself
had witnessed,
I can
see no
reason to
believe that you
could not
have thought
it
because you
didn't have
the words to
think it
in. But
saying it
is another
story. Let's
suppose you
try. Since you
have nothing
approaching embedding,
there is
no way
you can use
a relative
clause to
let the
others know
which bear
you are thinking
about. Since
you have
no articles
or any
comparable device,
there is
no way
you can
let the
others know
that y
ou are
talking about a
bear that
they know
about too.
Since you
have no
way of
marking relative time
by automatic
tense assignment
or even
adverbs, there
is no way
you can
let the
others know
that the
bear you
want to
talk about is
one that
is not
here anymore.
Since you
have no
verbs of
psychological action
(we'll see
why in
a moment),
there is
no way you
can use
the verb
form itself to
inform the
others that
you are speaking
of a
past time
(remind
,
recall,
remember,
etc.).
You can
try "Og
see other
bear."
Everybody panics.
"Where?
Bear where?"
"Bear not here."
Some laugh,
some get
angry ;
Og's up
to his
practical joking
again. "Bear
kill Ig,"
you try.
Now even
the ones
who are
laughing are sneering.
"lg!
lg dead!
Og
crazy!" If
you
have any
sense, you
shut up, or someone will get the idea to push you into the cave instead
of Ug.
It was mentioned earlier in the chapter that the power to predict the course of future events was what gave a selective advantage to those species which developed their cognitive capacities, and that this power depended crucially on the power to categorize and analyze past events. Both powers in turn depend upon the quality of the cognitive map-
'
that could advance beyond the initial plateau of the here-and-now could potentially do two things which would lead to an exponential increment in the survival power of the species possessing it.
First, it could code the cognitive map in such a way that process ing time would be drastically reduced. One can think nonverbally, by processing images, or one can think verbally, using lexical items instead of images; in order . to utter, or comprehend, or merely mentally con struct the sentence John drove the tan Oldsmobile from Arkansas to Texas, it is not necessary to frame mental images of John, or driving, or Oldsmobiles, or Arkansas, or Texas. A number of psychological experi ments (several referenced in Hamilton [1974] ) have shown that where labels for objects are available, h uman subjects perform more effec tively and much more rapidly; for instance, Glucksberg and Weisberg (1966) showed that solution times for label-aided as against label-free versions of a problem differed by a factor of fifteen to one. The mere fact that processing time is reduced automatically makes possible many analyses that could not previously have been attempted. For instance, where previously there might have been only time to model a single
hypothetical solution to a practical problem (such as that of dealing with an angry cave-bear in its cave without getting killed in the process), there is now time not only to model several hypothetical solutions but also to compare them and make a choice on the basis of that comparison.
Second, it could make solutions available to other members of the species. Cognitive development without the power to communi cate the results achieved by it may serve the survival of the individual but cannot serve the survival of the group. You could remember about the bear that killed lg, but if there is no way in which you can convey your thinking to Ug, then the odds are that although you won't get killed, Ug will, and so will lots of Ug's children and grandchildren.
True, your smart genes will multiply, while their dumb ones won't, but all that will do is bring a little bit.nearer the time when the species will break through the here-and-now barrier and achieve, not just
272 ROOTS OF LA". <GUAGE
predictability, but the dissemination of predictability- the unique capacity that launched a single primate species on its unprecedented
career
Let us consider some fairly minimal requirements that language
I
ORIGINS 273
T
with shared, old information fu:st (or zeroed) and nonshared informa tion second. There is now a potential conflict. Let X be old information and Y new information, and let it be the case that Y killed X. Topic comment order would then call for X keke Y, equivalent to 'X was killed by Y'.However, X keke Y would also correspond to the structure
must
have satisfied before it could emancipate itself from the here-
NiVNii, in which V has its causative sense and Nj is agentive-yielding
and-now.
First, the structure of one-clause sentences must have been
stabilized. It must have been stabilized because freely variable word order minus case-marking devices equals growing ambiguity as two and three-clause sentences develop. In fact, word-order cannot have stabilized so that longer sentences should be unambiguous; there must have been some motivation at the single-clause level. Let us consider what such motivation might have been.
To begin with, we need to look at something apparently quite
unconnected with
sentence-order- that
is, word-formation.
Although there is
an extensive
and controversial
literature on
the range
of distinc
tive speech
sounds that
early species
(in particular,
Neanderthal man)
could have
produced- see
Spuhler (1977)
for references-there
can be
little doubt
that that
range was
considerably smaller
than the
range of our
own species.
Let us
assume a
capacity for
five consonants
and three vowels
(not much
less than
the range
of modern
Hawaiian, with
eight consonants
and five
vowels) together
with CV
syllable s:ructure;
this would
give a
maximum capacity
of only
15 monosyllabic
words and 225
disyllabic words.
Moreover, all
languages we
know of
under utilize their
inventories, leaving
numernus lexical
gaps, so that
the practically
attainable total
would be lower
still. Factors
such as
these would encourage
use of
the same
lexical item
in causative
and non
causative senses.
In that
case, as
we saw
in Chapters
2 and
3, only
the frames NuV
and NiVNu
(where Nii
is nonagentive
and Ni,
agentive) would
distinguish causative
from noncausative
senses of
V.
Let us now consider a hypothetical word, keke, which means
'die' in the context N keke, but 'kill' in rhe context N keke N. We have assumed that the first word-order in early language was topic-comment,
'
an alternative reading, 'X killed Y'. In theory the conflict might be
resolved by adopting either strict topic-comment or strict SVO order, but since the latter holds less chance of ambiguity than the former, and is therefore fractionally more economical in processing time, we can assume either that it was universally adopted or that those languages that failed to adopt it died without issue. In fact , languages that did
fail to adopt SVO must surely have died out when the strict-order
languages achieved embedding and complex structure; it is tempting, although quite futile, to speculate that what caused the large size of the Neanclerthal cranium was the apparatus needed to process (and store in short-term memory ) multiply-ambiguous parsings of multiclause sentences in which the constituents were not systematically ordered.
If we accept Lamendella's hypothesis, there is support for the foregoing picture from acquisition processes. Bever ( 1970) has demon strated the existence of what he terms "Strategy C"-"Constituents are functionally related internally according to semantic constraints"- and "Strategy D"-"Any Noun-Verb-Noun (NVN) sequence within a potential internal unit in the surface structure corresponds to actor action-object." Experiments carried out by Bever and his associates indicate that children between two and three rely on Strategy C to comprehend sentences but that a little later they switch to Strategy D. This serves to explain the otherwise quite baffling fact that children's performance with regard to sentence types which involve nonagentive initial NPs (passives, clefts) actually deteriorates rather than improves between three and four.
The acquisitional sequence Strategy C-Strategy D would then replicate stages in the early development of language. Strategy C would have had to be developed in order to interpret case roles in the stage
274 ROOTS
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LANGUAGE
in
which
topic-comment
ordering
was
dominant.
Strategy
D
would
have
succeeded
it
as
soon
as
sentence-order
stabilized
and
became
the
pri
mary
marker
of
case
relations.
Note
that,
originally,
adoption
of
Stra
tegy
D
would
have
had
none
of
the
dysfunctional
side
effects
that
it
does
nowadays
with
children
acquiring
English
since,
at
that
time,
there
were
no
passives
and
no
clefts;
Strategy
D
would
have
given
the
right
answer
every
time.
We
can
assume
that
neural
modifications
accompanied
the
change.
What
these
may
have
been
is
still
beyond
anyone's
power
to
determine;
what
they
would
have
had
to
be
able
to
accomplish
is
slightly
less
opaque.
There
is
no
evidence
that
SVO
ever
got
hardwired
into
the
system,
but
assignment
of
case
roles
must
have
become
auto
matic,
and
underlying
this
must
have
been
a
hierarchy
of
cases
with
the
rank-order,
agent-experiencer-patient-subjecthood in
any
given
sen
tence
being
assigned
to
the
highest-ranking
case
in
that
sentence.
Also,
the
ape
experiments
are
anything
to
go
by,
speech
would
have
had
to be speeded up considerably (Rumbaugh and Gill [197 6] report a human-chimp conversation of only twenty-one sentences which took nine minutes) : more rapid processing would presumably have required qualitative as well as quantitative increases in neurons and neuron connections.
So far we have assumed a limit of two case roles per sentence. However, this does not mean that there were only two case roles in the h ominid repertoire Insofar as :ipt>s can use tools and give thinp;s to one another, one must assume that cases such as instrumental and dative are potentially within their grasp. But problems arise once a third case role is added.
Any two case roles can be ordered around V so that the higher of the two precedes V and the lower follows. But presence of a third means that two NPs must be conjoined. This creates parsing problems. If you want to say something like Ug gave Jg's meat to Og, there are three possible ways in which you can overcome these problems.
You
can
indicate
the
oblique
cases
with
prepositions,
or
post
positions,
or
some
other
purely
grammatical
case-marking
device.
ORIGINS 275
ill Ug gave Jg's meat to Og, 's marks the genitive and to, the dative case. I t 1s perhaps possible, but highly unlikely, that our predecessors could have invented grammatical case marking ah ovo; even in many syn chronic languages, case markers can be traced back to original content which have been bleached of their original semantics and down
·•cr••.<u·:u from their original syntactic roles.
In the absence of grammatical marking, you can simply string case roles together and hope that Strategy C-which must simply be wverridden, not erased, by Strategy D-will suffice to parse the result. In most cases it may, but in many it will not. The sentence introduced above, for example, would come out as Ug give Ig meat Og, which might be parsed as 'Ug gave Ig's meat to Og' buf could also be parsed as 'Ug gave lg the meat of Og'. Note that parsing mistakes in discourse must be cumulative ; the listener who thought lg got Og's meat and the listener who thought Og got Ig's meat would put quite different con structions on the sentences that folfowed.
The third alternative would be to preserve the two-case-roles-per scntence restriction and conjoin sentences: Ig have meat, Ug take meat, Ug give Og. This is cumbersome but unambiguous. But note that if the second occurrence of Ug is omitted, you get Ug take meat give Og the same serial structuring of dative-incorporating sentences that we found as a frequent feature of creoles in Chapter 2.
In fact, verb serialization, probably arising out of paratactic con junction plus equi-deletion, represents the only plausible means by which early language could have broken out of smgle-clause structure. It is difficult for us now to appreciate the magnitude of the advance that was involved. The single-clause apelike proto-language was, as we have said, almost certainly limited to dealing with physical activities in the here and now. Sentences representing mental activities almost always demand more than one clause. If we say that something hap pened when something else happened, or will happen if something else happens, or happened because something else happened, we are repre senting not something that we have perceived directly through the senses, but the result of some kind of mental computation performed
276 ROOTS
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LANGUAGE
on sensory inputs (or, to be more precise, on things that originated as sensory inputs but that have already had a lot of processing done to them, along lines suggested earlier in this chapter). Still more clearly, if we remember, or believe, or think , or hope, or expect that something happened or will happen, or if we want or hope or decide to do some thing, we are again directly representing a mental operation on the product of past inputs or the projected product of possible future ones, and in either case, one that cannot be expressed in a single clause. The gap between monopropositional sentences and multipropositional sentences is the gap between talking only about observables in the external world and communicating the contents of one's mind. And the bridging of that gap must have constituted the greatest single step in what anthropologists mean by the ugly terms "hominization" or "sapienization"-the process of becoming the kind of species that we now are.
Verb serialization
helped to
bridge this
gap, and
the way
in
which it
accomplished this
is worth
looking at
a
little more
closely. At
first glance, the
results of
verb serialization
may look
a little
like those
underlying structures
that were
once proposed
by generative
semanti cists in
which verbs
were distintegrated
into what
were supposedly
primitive concepts;
perhaps the
most widely
discussed of
these was
the
proposed derivation of kill from cause to become not alive. Similarly,
if
one found
a language
that expressed
the
meaning of
bring
the
book
to
me
as the
equivalent of
carry
the
book
come
give
me,
it
might seem that
sentences of
the latter
type reflected
the absence
of a
means for
generating derived
lexical forms.
Such a
view might
lead to
the conclu
sion
that there
were two
types of
action, a
type that
was "semantically
complex" (capable
of being
broken down
into primes)
like
kill
or bring,
and a
type that
was "semantically
simple" (its
members being
themselves primes)
like cause
or
carry.
Such a view is, Ithink, incorrect. There is probably no action verb which is either intrinsically simple or intrinsically complex in the ways suggested above. How actions came to be lexicahzed is something which, like so many other things of equal or greater importance, we
'
ORIGINS 277
have had to skim over or ignore altogether in an account as compressed as this one. However, we need to note that verbs are abstractions from sensory input in a way that nouns are not. At first glance, one might think that the referent of a verb like hit was as unambiguously unitary as the referent of a noun like dog, although in fact John hit Bill could be rendered more accurately (if more circumlocutiously ) as John clenched fist John drew-back arm John thrust-forward arm fist met Bil[ ln fact, there are perhaps no "semantically simple" verbs that could not be represented in a "semantically complex" way, and vice versa. What determines whether a particular referent action is repre sented by one verb or more than one is nothing to do with semantic complexity, but has a lot to do with the number of case roles the action involves. It is precisely those actions which involve a number of case roles that are singly lexicalized in prepositional languages, and multiply lexicalized in verb-serializing languages.
The aid supplied by verb serialization in bridging the gap between monopropositional and multipropositional sentences had nothing to do with semantics. Verb serialization simply made available structures more complex than had existed hithertostructures that added the possibility of NVNVN to the previous NV and NVN structures.
Now we need to consider how the representation of mental activities could have commenced. We have a syntactic bridge, but we also need a semantic bridge. Ishall propose that the semantic bridge was provided by two classes of verbs: verbs of reporting and verbs of perception. Both represent actions that are in some sense "more phy sical" than the true psychological verbs of thinking, hoping, remem bering, etc. Both entail dual-propositional sentences. Both are likely to be of high utility in hunting-and-gathering communities where members frequently split up in their search for food and need to con vey to the others information about their degree of success in that search. Ishall not attempt to determine priority as between these two classes.
Verb-class membership would now become critical in parsing.
278 ROOTS
OF LANGUAGE
The developing
grammar would
generate NVNVN
sequences, but these
would be
ambiguous between
two
interpretations, e.g.,
NV[NVN] or
NVN[ (N)VN]
(where the
constituent in
parentheses had
been equi
deleted). However,
if the
first V
was one
of perception
or reporting, the
second N
would be
subject of
the second
V; if
the first
V belonged to
some other
class, the
second N
would be
the object
of the
frrst V, and
the sentence
would be
parsed as
a serialization.
When the
"true" psychological
verbs came
to be
added, they
too would
follow the
first of these
patterns.
The development of reporting verbs would have begun at the
same time as the development of displacement. If I report what another person said and that other person is not present, then obviously the saying must have occurred on a previous occasion. If I tell you Ug say honey here, it requires no Socratic intellect to figure out that the honey may be here now (although of course it need not be) but that the saying of honey here by Ug must have occurred at a previous time (and perhaps in another place, although my capacity to translate Ug's actual utterance of honey here is something else that cannot simply be assumed). However, as sentences become more complex, the need to distinguish observation from computation, earlier from later, and general from specific statements must increase. Failure to make such distinctions, preferably in some quite rigorous and automatic way, leads to parsing problems which could compound even more rapidly than parsing problems arising from case assignment. Some scaffolding is required that will accurately fix the place of sentences in the world of time and reality; TMA systems supply this scaffolding.
Quine (1960: 170) expressed frustration and puzzlement with the fact that all sentences of all human languages must obligatorily express tense, but then, from Reichenbach on, philosophers have glaringly failed to make any kind of sense out of TMA systems. Their recipe has always been, "Take the distinctions that are said by tradi tional grammarians to be made in modern English and reduce them to some kind of a formal schema." Since the advantages, if any, of this
approach are totally opaque to me, I shall discuss it no further. From
\
ORIGINS 279
an evolutionary viewpoint, it appears plausible that the only distinc tions the first TMA system could grammaticize must have been dis tinctions which were somehow already implicit in the ways in which the brain processed and stored information. If certain types of infor mation were already stored in different places or in different ways, then attaching some kind of grammatical index to the products of different stores would not have presented too much difficulty. On the other hand, the only possible alternative- that the species invented cate gories for which there was no such preexisting infrastructure, and then either built a redundant set of infrastructures to reprocess it, or some how assigned marking with 100 percent efficiency in the absence of such infrastructure- is at best an improbable one.
People find this hard to comprehend because categories such as "past," "present," and "future" seem quite natural and transparent. In fact, the so-called "moment of speech" which marks the elusive "point present" which is the linchpin of Reichenbachian analysis is an abstraction which can never be experienced but can only be inferred by beings who already have produced some kind of time-marking device. People talk about "present" as if it were somehow on a par with "past" and "future"; but while any single point action can be in the "past" or the "future," no such action can be in the "present," simply because it must already be in the "past" before you can get time to open your mouth to talk about it. As for "future" and "past," the former is of dubious status in that events assigned to it, however probable or plausible, are artifacts of the imagination ontologically indistinguishable from wants and wishes, however unlikely or even counterfactual, while the latter, although the most tangible of the three, suffers in utility from being internally undifferentiated.
In fact, time presents itself in experience as an unchanging state it always was, is, and will be "now," as far as the experiencing indi vidual is concerned- and, with an assist from memory and prediction, as a constant and unbroken flow pouring against us. No remotely plausible mechanisms of perception or neural processing would seem to yield the neat bisection of time into two equal portions divided by a
280 ROOTS
OF
LANGUAGE
constantly moving point which constitutes the "commonsense" analysis of time-imprisoned Western man. 11 Far different is the case for the distinctions to be argued here.
I shall propose that if the distinctions of ±anterior, ±irrealis, and
±nonpunctual are the TMA distinctions consistently made in creole languages, and if these distinctions struggle to emerge, as they seem to, in the course of natural language acquisition, then they represent the primary TMA distinctions made in the earliest human language(s), and appear in all three places because of their naturalness. Since the word "naturalness" has been subjected to so many abuses, I had better make very plain what I mean by it in this context. The naturalness of a disc tinction is assumed to be an all-or-nothing characteristic and not a matter of degree. A distinction is natural just in case it corresponds to a difference in the mode of perceiving, processing, storing, or access ing data in the brain, such difference in turn depending on specific features of the brain's physical structure. It is assumed that only dis tinctions of this kind can be candidates for primary grammaticization.
Quite obviously, in the present state of our knowledge, any claims about brain structure can have no more than hypothetical status. This fact is no excuse for imitating the ostrich, as does Muysken when he claims (1981a) that an earlier and much sketchier account of this area12 "will remain arbitrary until we know a lot more about the functioning of the brain." We will not know a lot more about the functioning of the brain until we have made and compared and evalu ated a lot more models of the brain along the lines of the one I have tried to construct in this chapter. The idea that scientists "increase knowledge" simply by "finding out facts" in the absence of any kind of theoretical model-building is an illusion which, remarkably enough, flourishes only among those who themselves deal with mainly theore tical issues, while it simply does not exist among workers in the physi" cal sciences, who so mnch take for granted the interaction of specula tive models and empirical findings that they never even see the need to defend their methods. In fact, it is quite conceivable that we could track every dendrite to its synapse and still not have the faintest idea
\
ORIGINS 281
how the brain worked, just because we had no adequate model of what all its electrical and molecular activity might be designed to accomplish. Therefore, to try to rebut the claims made here with the mere cry of "You can't prove it!" is as irrelevant as it is redundant. Those who disagree with the model presented here, which may indeed be wrong
in detail or even in totality, have no recourse _other than to construct better ones.
Muysken was
right, however,
in poumng
out that
my earlier account
had failed
to explain
the syntactic
ordering of
TMA markers, and
accordingly, the
present account
will remedy
that def!Ciency.
Let tis
review
some relevant
evidence. We
know that
the ordering
of mark
ers in
creoles is
always TMA,
anterior-irrealis-nonpunctual.
We know
that in VO languages, as we are assuming the primordial language(s) to have been, free verbal elements which modify the meaning of the main verb usually precede the main verb. We know that the commonest source for TMA markers in creoles (and in other languages) is that of former full lexical verbs. 13 We will assume that whatever distinctions the original markers may have made, the markers themselves were
derived from full lexical verbs. We will further assume that the markers
must have been added in some order, that is to say, they were not ai!ded all at the same time. These two assumptions seem to me to be unexceptionable.
Almost as unexceptionable is the assumption that when the first marker was added , it became an immediate constituent of the verb, a.rid. hence any markers added subsequently would have to be posi"
J ti6ned externally to the unit formed by the verb and the first marker.
< Certainly, it is hard to think of any motivation there could have been for inserting a new marker BETWEEN the original marker and the verb. Granted, we cannot prove that this did not happen. But there are ways in'Yhich the assumption can be tested.
Earlier in this chapter it was claimed that between any pair of
··•·:it:...•·•disldil<:ti<ms, the distinction whose neural infrastructure had been laid
'.fi(\
dlow'n earliest
in phylogeny
would be
the first
to be
realized in
language.
282 ROOTS
OF LANGUAGE
Also, by Lamendella's hypothesis, the distinction first realized in language should be the first to be realized in the acquisition of lan. guage. Thus, in principle, we have two different ways of testing the assumption made above about adding order, two ways that are coin. pletely independent of one another: if both yield the same answer, then this constitutes mutual support for the two hypotheses, and if the answer yielded by both is the answer yielded by ou.r (indepen dently motivated) assumption, then further support is provided for the assumption.
According to that assumption, the nonpunctual marker, being always closest to the verb, represents the first of the three distinctions to be grammaticized. Therefore, punctual-nonpunctual should be the first of the three distinctions to acquire the appropriate neural infra structure, and it should also be the first to be acquired by children.
In Chapter 3, we surveyed a considerable body of evidence which suggested that whatever children might be thought to be learning (and sometimes they might be thought to be learning past-nonpast before other distinctions), what they really learned first was punctual nonpunctual. Our second criterion is thus satisfied. With respect to the frrst, let us consider possible neural infrastructures for punctual nonpunctual. One of the earliest neural structures known to us is that which underlies the phenomenon known as habituation. In Aplysia, a sluglike marine mollusk whose nervous system contains only a hand ful of ganglia with a few hundred neurons each, the sensitive organs are extruded from a mantled cavity and consist of a gill for breathing, a siphon for eating, and a purple gland. The last two serve as primitive organs of perception. If anything touches the siphon or the gland, the gill retracts into the cavity. However, if you touch either gland or siphon at regular, brief intervals, the withdrawal response will diminish in both speed and intensity until eventually it is extinguished. Aplysia has done its equivalent of deciding that your actions are nonthreatening and thus it is wasteful to respond to them.
Aplysia's actions are of course entirely automatic and represent the workings of a mechanism whih has evolved in the vast majority of
ORIGINS 283
animate creatures to prevent them from being wholly at the mercy of every external stimulus. It enables them to disregard irrelevant stimuli and reserve their energies to react to imminent danger or to seize feeding opportunities. If mechanisms such as this go back as far as mollusks, they antedate by some hundreds of millions of years any mechanisms that might underlie the other two TMA distinctions.
Clearly, habituation mechanisms have grown considerably more sophisticated since Aplysia emerged. Each of our senses has mechanisms that filter abrupt and sudden outside stimuli, which require immediate action on our part, from ongoing or persistently repeated stimuli, which do not. Driving down a crowded street, we are not at all perturbed by the constant movement of countless pedestrians, but let a ball bounce off the edge of the pavement, and (hopefully ) we instantly slam on the brakes in anticipation of the child that may follow it. Working alone in an empty house, we pay no attention to sporadic noises in the street outside or the background murmur from the freeway a block or two off; we probably do not even consciously hear these things if we are engrossed in what we are doing; but let the slightest sound come from the rooms around us, and we stop whatever we are doing and become instantly alert. After the event we may tell the story as if we DECIDED to brake or DECIDED to attend to the strange sound, but these are post hoe rationalizations of our neuronal watchdogs' purely autono mous activities. In other words, the sorting of punctual from non punctual actions is done for us automatically, and it seems reasonable to suppose (although it is still far from provable) that percepts in the memory store are somehow coded with reference to whether they otiginated from sets of neurons specialized for perception of punctual events or from sets specialized for nonpunctual ones.
This capacity to make the punctual-nonpunctual distinction in real life, so to speak, must have been crucial to our ancestors, inter mediate as they were between those who might prey on them and those on whom they might prey. It is hard to think of any distinction
.which could have been more important for them to make as they began to build up the store of communal experience that would become
284 ROOTS
OF
LANGUAGE ORIGINS 285
the traditional wisdom of human groups. The interrelation of punctual of the external world or whether they lacked any such origin.
and nonpunctual, foreground and background, provided basic ways of At whatever point our ancestors achieved the power to con- analyzing and classifying the diverse experiences with natural forces and sciously manipulate the memory store in order to generate hypothetical with other species which could now be handed on from generation to future events or "might-have-beens," a new dimension would have generation, growing as it spread through time, yielding knowledge of been added to irrealis, but the essential coding difference would not a wide range of phenomena and the actions appropriate in the presence have been affected; whatever was internally generated would be coded of those phenomena. differently from whatever was externally generated. Nowadays, of Alone of the three TMA distinctions, punctual-nonpunctual course, most of us can consciously and quite explicitly distinguish, if correlated \vith observable phenomena. The reaJig,-irrealis distinction required to do so, between events that really happened and events contrasts observed events with events that are unobservable, at least that are the product of dreams, desires, wishes, and expectations; if at the time of speech ; the anterior-nonanterior contrasts, not events we cannot, we are separated from the remainder of the species and at all, but the relative timing of events, a high!y abstract feature. maintained in institutions specializing in this and similar conditions Punctua!-nonpunctual, however, can be directly observed whenever a until such time as we recover the capacity. To be able to tell realis single action interrupts a more protracted or a repeated one. It could from irrealis is a crucial part of being fully human. But the foundation therefore have been grammaticized at a stage when only physical of this capacity and of our capacity to mark verbs in a way appro- objects or events were capable of being grammaticized or lexicalized. priate to the status of their referents must be the same: some kind of Whether or not grammaticization took place this early, all the evi- neural coding of memory items that reflects internal as opposed to
dence suggests that punctual-nonpunctual was the first TMA distinction external source.
to be grammaticized, and accordingly, the form that marked the Unfortunately, in the case of realis-irrealis and anterior-non distinction would have been juxtaposed to the main verb. anterior, we cannot draw the evidence that we drew from child acqui-
To find the evolutionary ancestry of the second distinction, sition in the case of punctual-nonpunctual. While it is highly possible realis-irrealis, we need to know the earliest source for items in the that children make irrealis distinctions before they make anterior memory store that did not originate in the organs of perception. In all distinctions, the point is not easy to prove since the lack of correspon- probability that source was dreaming. Dreaming began with mammals- dence between the bioprogram TMA system and the systems of most reptiles, as far as we are aware, do not dream-and its origins and evo- target languages is such that it is by no means easy to tell when children lutionary function remain mysterious. One explanation treats dreams have acquired whatever forms may correspond to irrealis and whatever as "providing for better building of the memory model by continued fom!s may correspond to anterior. It is true, for instance, that children operation of the mechanism for memorizing during the night, even learning English acquire futures long before they acquire pluperfects, when no further information from external sources is available" (Young but since future does not correspond one-to-one with irrealis and plu- 1978:209). Certainly , dreams appear to permute actual experiences in perfect does not correspond one-to-one with anterior, it would be
ways that produce novel constructs. However, we have hypothesized unfair and unrealistic to base any claims on this fact alone. Hopefully, that items in the memory store are coded in ways that reveal the source studies of acquisition of those creole languages which preserve the
of each item. If this is so, all items in the store must have (at least) i; 6rigil1al distinctions fairly intact, as well as more sophisticated studies
coding which
will indicate
whether they
originated from
perceptions the
acquisition
of other
types of
language, may
be able
to provide
' needed evidence.
286 ROOTS
OF LANGUAGE
However, even in the absence of such evidence, it seems likely that anterior was the last of the TMA distinctions to be added. In order to make the distinction, the order of past events has to be accessible. Perhaps all creatures that have memories have mechanisms, as we must, by which the order in which memories are laid down corresponds with the order in which the relevant experiences occurred. However, recover ability of that order is another matter, for any kind of recoverability entails volitional manipulation of the memory store, and there is no reason to suppose that volitional manipulation preceded nonvolitional manipulation (i.e., dreaming). Thus, the antecedents of anterior are almost certainly more recent than the antecedents of irrealis.
Furthermore, the utility of anterior as a category would be unlikely to arise until discourse had become fairly complex. Anterior marking is primarily a device which alerts the listener to backward shifts of time in a narrative or a conversation, thus enabling him to preserve the correct sequence of reported events-a must if features such as causality are to be extracted from it-even when the reporting diverges from that sequence. Thus, not only are the mechanisms under lying anterior probably more recent than the mechanisms underlying irrealis, but the functional need for anterior is almost certainly more recent than the functional need for irrealis.
If this is the case, we can claim that according to four sets of criteria-age of infrastructure, age of functional utility, time of child acquisitions, and sequence within Aux-the three basic TMA distinc tions are ranked in the order: nonpunctual first, irrealis second, and anterior third. 14 Note that the surface order of tense-modality-aspect which this yields is not only the order of creoles but also what has been assumed from Chomsky (1957) on to be the underlying order for English, and perhaps other languages too.
Although considerations of space have prevented us from survey ing a number of other features-such as the development of pronouns, pluralization, movement rules, etc.-which must have accompanied or closely followed the developments actually described, we have carried our account of the early history of language to a point at which, in its
\
ORIGINS 287
degree of complexity, it can have fallen but little short of an early creole language. In other words, we have brought language close to a point at which, for all practical purposes, the biological development of language ceased, and the cultural development of language began. I have not even attempted to provide a time scale for these develop ments, either absolute or relative; they may have been spread out over two or three million years or they may have come in a series of bursts or even (though this is intrinsically less likely ) in a single explosion of creativity.
Although at present we can do little more than guess, the sugges tion by Hockett (1973) that there might be some connection berween the emergence of fully-developed language and the sudden and ex tremely rapid series of cultural changes that were initiated some ten thousand years ago is quite an appealing one. There is something inherently implausible in the idea that an evolutionary line which had existed for countless centuries within the hunting-and-gathering frame work in which some members of our species still exist should suddenly begin to grow crops, herd animals, build permanent settlements, con struct complex belief systems, and evince countless other behaviors typical of our species, and highly atypical of all others, merely because certain small areas had exceeded their carrying capacity (if indeed they had). With all species, areas exceed their carrying capacity from time to time, and the result is always the same-the species moves, if there is anywhere to move to, and if it is not an unduly territorial species; otherwise, individual members of the species die off until the balance of nature is restored. Similar experiences must have happened to our ancestors countless times and in countless places during the Pleistocene, with its sudden and extreme changes of climate, but the responses must always have been the same: migration or population loss.
It seems likely that agriculture commenced not as a reaction to climatic change, population imbalance, or any other external cause, but rather as a result of vast changes in the computational and com municative power of the species. Dearth was feared rather than experi-
288 ROOTS
OF LANGUAGE
enced, and plans were made to prevent it. The shift from taking what nature provided, an attitude characterizing all previous species, to attempting to control nature was a vast one involving the power to construct an imaginary future and then communicate that construct to others so that concerted efforts could be made to realize it. Such attempts could hardly have been carried out without the aid of a language developed at least to the extent that we have envisaged here; but if such a language long antedated the birth of agriculture, how was it that that and all the other arts and sciences were not born far earlier than in fact they were?
At present, no adequate answer can be attempted. In any case, the precise dating of the events detailed in this account is really irrele vant. Some series of events such as have been described must have happened at some time during the last couple of million years or so for our ancestors to have passed from a state of no language to a state in which there existed languages recognizably similar to those of today. When those events occurred is a matter of legitimate interest, but not one that can affect either positively or negatively the validity of the foregoing account.
No one can be more acutely aware than I that the account given here is provisional, hypothetical, and can at best serve as no more than a rickety bridge between our present condition of almost total ignor ance and some future state in which we may have at least a handful of relative certainties to build upon. However, the purpose of this chapter never was to write a definite prehistory and early history of language, but rather to show that, first, a series of capacities that might be plausibly held to have been latent in our last speechless ancestors, plus some capacities that could plausibly have evolved in the course of constructing a linear vocal language, could have yielded something recognizably similar to an early creole language, and second, that on the basis of what we at present know about our own species, such an outcome-a creole-like language-would have been intrinsically likelier than any other kind of possible language. The test of such an account lies not in whether this detail or hat detail of it may be proven true
ORIGINS 289
or false, but in whether or not it proves possible to build better (more plausible, more detailed, more explanatory ) models.
If the present model is in essence correct, and if a creole-like language was the end product of a long period of biological evolution, then the overall capacity to produce languages of this type (itself a composite of neural capacities that preexisted any kind of language and neural capacities that were added as language evolved) 15 must at that point (and for the rest of the life of the species, it should go without saying) have formed a part of the genetic inheritance of every individual member of the species. It would then unfold, as we have claimed, as part of the normal growth development of every child in most cases, being quickly overlaid by the local cultural language, but in a few, emerging in something not too different from its original form. It would merely require triggering by SOME form of linguistic activity from others-how much, and of what kind, remains one of the most interesting questions we can ask about language-which is why wolf children, who share our biological inheritance, cannot speak, and why the interesting experiments of Psammetichus, James IV, Frederick II, and Akbar the Great all failed.
It is not without some interest that the account given here resembles, in some respects, the Biblical account of language. The Bible claims that language is a divine gift. This account can offer no objection to such a belief, assuming that God has chosen to work through evolutionary process; certainly, both accounts firmly reject the suggestion that language was in any sense a conscious or deliberate human invention. The Bible claims that our species originally spoke a single language. This account claims the same, with a slight qualifi cation: the issue of whether language frrst arose in one group or in several independently is entirely irrelevant since, assuming the latter, all groups would have had the same neurological equipment, and thus their languages, although perhaps differing in lexical choices (as modern creoles do, for that matter) would have been structurally identical or almost so. The Bible claims that human language diversified coinci dentally with a sudden surge of technological capacity, symbolized
290 ROOTS OF
LANGUAGE
by the erection of the Tower of Babel (a tower aimed at reaching heaven, i.e., usurping powers over nature which were properly part of the divine prerogative). This account would also claim (and I will develop the claim a little further in the next paragraph) that human language diversified as a direct result of rapid cultural and technological diversification, aiming, consciously or not (and in our time it has become a conscious goal) at "The Conquest of Nature:" I would be the last person to adduce Scriptural authority in support of a scientific theory, bu!: the resemblances are intriguing, to say the least.
The question most frequently asked about the theory presented in this volume is: "If our biological inheritance provides for us a ready made language, so to speak, how is it that we ever abandoned that language in favor of the diverse and far more complex languages of today ?" The answer is that, in a sense, the biological language self destructed. It had made possible the construction of cognitive maps more detailed and complete than those available to any previous species, maps which enabled their users to enter what was in effect a wholly new cognitive domain, a domain, in which events could be predicted and forestalled and even altered rather than passively endured as all previous species had endured them. It had conferred on our species the power to LIVE DIFFERENTLY -differently from the past, and differently from one another.
So, differently was how they lived. Previously, as in all other species, our ancestors had all lived roughly the same kind of life; if they happened to live near a mud flat, they would include shellfish in their diet; if they didn't, they wouldn't; and that was about the extent of the difference. Now, some went on hunting and gathering and some became pastoralists and some became cultivators and some founded cities and lived by farming other people. New needs arose. New cate gories were established to take care of those needs. Some groups found it convenient to code verbs in such a way that the evidential status of any remark was immediately apparent. Some groups found it con venient to code nouns in such a way that the major semantic classes
'
ORIGINS 291
to which they belonged were immediately apparent. These new cate gories were superimposed on the old ones, but a language is a system or it is nothing, so that this superimposition shifted and distorted the older, more "natural" categories and in some cases, perhaps, overlaid them completely. This, too, was natural, in its way. No biological language could have been designed to su'it the needs of all humans under all the different circumstances in which humans could live; indeed, if any such language could have been designed, it would either have been itself subject to change (since cultural evolution is not a closed process) or if not so subject would have been positively dys functional, since it could not have adapted to our changing needs and priorities. Thus, one hundred centuries of cultural change and develop ment have produced the world of diverse, yet underlyingly similar, languages which we know today.
But not only cultural factors served to change the bioprogram language. Factors concerned with language processing are also opera tive. I will illustrate just two different types of such factors here.
The first involves relative clauses. As we saw in Chapter 1, HCE has no surface marker of relativization, even where English obligatorily requires one, provided that there is a head noun. If there is not a head noun, then an English relative pronoun is supplied. Thus, we get headed relatives like da gai gon lei da vainil fo mi bin kwot mi prais 'The guy WHO was going to lay the vinyl for me had quoted me a price', with no marking, but headless relatives like hu go daun frs iz luza '(THE ONE) who goes down first is the loser', with an English relative pro noun. Obviously, the difficulty of incorporating English relatives per se cannot be what is responsible for sentences of the first type. Rather, the cause must be, first, that all HCE sentences require some kind of overt subject (except imperatives, of course), and, second, that as we hypothesized in earlier chapters, HCE lacks-"used to lack" might be more accurate-a rule that would rewrite NP as N S, but possesses a rule that would rewrite NP simply as S, thus yielding the structure NP(NP V X] VP for both the above sentences.
292 ROOTS
0}'
LANGUAGE
However, as was shown in Bever and Langendoen (1971), zero relative pronouns in sentences where the head noun is subject of the relative clause can cause serious ambiguities in a minority of sentences. Practically all creoles now have some kind of relative marking, pre sumably as a consequence of such processing problems. Thus, change away from the bioprogram pattern can set in very quickly even whee it is not triggered by language contact, if the functional pressure ls
sufficient.
The second factor involves word order. It has been claimed here that the original language order was SVO with serialization but that this order was not necessarily hard-wired. This directly contradicts a claim by Giv6n (1979:Chapter 7) that the original language order was SOV. Giv6n's evidence is that a majority of the world's language families are either synchronically SOV or reconstruct back to SOV, while change in the reverse direction is rare. But in fact, serial SVO often forms an intermediate stage between SVO and SOV in Austro nesian languages which are changing under the influence of Papuan languages (Bradshaw 1979). In our original language, a similar change could have come about in the following manner: first, there occur a number of NVNVN sequences in which the final N is realized as a pronoun; second, object pronouns become diticized; third, the first ". is reanalyzed as a preposition. In this way, a structure that was .or ginally analyzed as Subject-Verb-Object-Verb-Object changes unt il it can be reanalyzed as Subject-Preposition-Oblique Case-Verb- SXV, in fact. This is then interpreted as the canonical order, and any foll NP objects left behind the verb are moved in front of it in order to remove what now appears to be an anomaly. It is, of course, not necessarily implied that all early languages followed this course; but if a number of them did, then the data which Giv6n took as proof of original SOV could easily be accounted for.
There is not space here to discuss in detail how the bioprogram theory would affect the theory of linguistic change. It shuld ?e apparent that an entire volume could easily be written on this topic.
'
ORIGINS 293
The study of linguistic change has been effectively paralyzed for many decades by the empirically groundless belief that all the world's current languages are at a similar level of development. Even the study of Greenbergian universals led only to suggestions of a kind of ceaseless seesawing between OV and VO orders. Iwould predict that, tight or wrong, the present theory would at least give something tangible for diachronic linguistics to chew on.
However, it should at least be pointed out that the present theory does not claim a steady progression away from the biopro grarnmed base. Quite apart from the drastic recyclings which pidginiza tion precipitates, there are likely to be partial reemergences of bio program features in a number of linguistic situations, prominent among these being, first, the constant surfacing of so-called "subscandard" varieties in classes where prescriptive monitoring is minimal, and second, contacts between typologically different languages (such as the Austronesian-Papuan clash mentioned above) which set in motion extreme change processes in one party or the other. Thus, despite a very rightly skeptical survey by Polome (1980) which concludes that creolization may hardly ever or never have been responsible for histo rical changes, . there may still be some truth in the persistent claims that Germanic, or Egyptian, or Old Japanese may owe some of their features to "creolization." In fact, Polome would still be correct in claiming that true creolization had not taken place; the creole-like features would be derived from the same bioprogram that is responsible for creoles and for many acquisitional features, but surfacing under rather different and somewhat less radical circumstances than those which give rise to creoles.
We have now completed our survey of creoles, acquisition, and origins, showing the wide range of similarities that unite the first two and that could derive in both cases from the reenactment of the third. In the fifth and final chapter I shall briefly summarize the theory which these findings support, and place it in the context of existing linguistic theories, and I shall also glance at a few of the more obvious arguments that may be brought against it.
CONCLUSIONS 295
Chapter 5
CONCLUSIONS
The foregoing chapters have surveyed the three major areas of language development: development in the individual, developn:ent of new languages, and original development of language. Parsimony alo1 e would suggest that these developmental processes might have much m common with one another, and the common pattern that emerges has an independent support that no other linguistic theory that I know of could claim: it is in accord with all we have so far learned about evo lutionary. processes and it is in accord with all we have.so far le:irned about how processes in the brain determine the hehavior of animate creatures. During the sixties and seventies, we heard a good deal about something called "psychological reality," although what it was was never well defined; I would suggest that whatever the fate of the theory argued here, any future linguistic theory will have to be able to claim
"biological reality" if it is to be taken seriously. • The theory argued here has claimed that many of the prerequ1-
sites for human language were laid down in the course of mammalian evolution, and that the most critical of those prerequisites- for even things like vocal tract development were necessary, but in no sense
sufficient
requirements
1-was
the
capacity
to
construct
quite
elaborate
'
,
mental representations of the external world in terms of concepts rather than percepts. In other words, something recognizable as thought (though clearly far more primitive than developed. human thought} necessarily preceded the earliest forms of anything recognizable as language.
Circumstances still obscure enabled our (fairly remote) ancestors
-perhaps Homo erectus, perhaps some other species-to lexicalize concepts and construct a primitive form of language probably not too dissimilar to that achievable, under training, by modern apes. Language even at so primitive a level conferred a sharp, selective advantage to its users. Over a long period, language developed biologically in the follow ing manner. In any group of any species, there is a certain amount of random variation which allows for variation in individual skill. Those individuals who had higher skills in the manipulation of language had those skills as a direct result of the fact that such random variation had produced, in their brains, mechanisms better adapted for converting preexisting mental representations into linguistic fonn by lexicalizing and grammaticizing the categories into which those representations were already sorted by neurological processes. Since language-skilled individuals possessed a higher potential for survival, they would pro duce more offspring than other individuals, and the capacities that had arisen in them by random variation would he preserved and trans mitted intact to their descendants.
Note that there is nothing particularly novel about all of this; most people nowadays would agree without any hesitation that the giraffe's neck, the hummingbird' s bill, and all other adaptive develop ments ON A PHYSICAL LEVEL have originated in precisely this manner. It is merely the superstitious persistence of Cartesian dualism that makes people reluctant to admit that since mental characteristics just as firm a physical foundation in neurological structures,
the same processes of biological evolution must apply to them also.
If language arose in the way I have indicated, then what was passed on from generation to generation was not some vague, abstract "general learning capacity," or even some highly-specified "language
296 ROOTS OF
LANGUAGE
learning capacity." Biological evolution does not trade in nebulous concepts like these ; it hands out concrete features, concrete capacities for specific operations. What was passed on was precisely the capacity to produce a particular, highly-specified language, given only some (perhaps quite minimal) triggering in the form of communal language use. This capacity had attained the level of contemporary creoles when the computational power it bestowed on its owners triggered the cultural explosion of the last ten millennia;2 and since cultural evolu tion works far faster than biological evolution, and since it operates at a far more abstract level, the effects of cultural evolution on language could not be transferred to the gene pool. Therefore, biological lan guage remained right where it was, while cultural language rode off in all directions. However, it was always there, under the surface, waiting to emerge whenever cultural language hit a bad patch, so to speak ; and the worst patch that cultural language ever hit was the unprece dented, culture-shattering act of the European colonialists who set up the slave trade. But it is true that out of evil, good may come, and if they had not done this, we might never have found the one crucial clue to the history of our species.
However, even without such setbacks, cultural language could not expand away from the biological base indefinitely. Just as biology produced a floor below which human language could not fall, so it produced a ceiling above which human language could not rise. The realm of variability of any species has upper limits consisting of capa cities from which it is barred genetically from ever having. There can be little doubt that what we genetically have determines how far (and in what directions) we can go culturally in ways which, hopefully, will be major focal points of linguistics, philosophy , psychology, and anthropology in the decades to come. Thus, though languages may diversify and complexify, they can never become unlearnable- or if they do, children will soon pull them back to earth again.
The child does not, initially, "learn language." As he develops,
the genetic program for language which is his hominid inheritance unrolls exactly as does the genetic program that determines his increase
\
CONCLUSIONS 297
in size, muscular control, etc. "Learning" consists of adapting this program, rev1smg it, adjusting it to fit the realities of the cultural language he happens to encounter. Without such a program, the sim plest of cultural languages would presumably be quite unlearnable. But the learning process is not without its tensions-the child tends to hang on to his innate grammar for as long as possible- so that the "learning trajectory" of any human child will show traces of the bioprogram, and bioprogram rules and structures may make their way into adult speech whenever the model of the cultural language is weakened.
This, then, in outline is the unified theory of language acquisi tion, creole language origins, and general language origins for which the present volume has amassed numerous and diverse types of evi dence. The question must now arise: how does this theory relate to existing linguistic theories, and what modifications in such theories does it appear to demand?
Generative theory has now survived for more than two decades as the leading theory in modern linguistics, despite attacks from diverse quarters. Although in the course of this book I have said some harsh words about some current generative stances, it should have been apparent, first, that the theory expressed here would probably have been impossible to frame if generative grammar had never existed, and second, that there is no hostility between the two theories on major issues. The present theory complements and amplifies generative theory. The latter has, in fact, ceded most of the former's territory. The leading figures in generative grammar have simply ignored creoles and shown a positive antipathy to the mere idea of language origins; as for acquisition, while they have theorized about it, they have not deigned to get their hands dirty by actually examining it.
In fact, bioprogram theory and Chomskyan formal universals fit rather well together, as illustrated in Figure 5.1 on the following page. The bioprogram language would constitute a core structure for human language. Natural languages would be free to vary within the space between the outer limit of the bioprogram and the overall limit
298 ROOTS
OF
LANGUAGE
imposed by formal universals, which represent neural limits-species specific limits-on human capacity to process language.
Limit imposed
by formal universals
Figure 5.1
Relationship of bioprogram to formal universals
Note, however, that the bioprogram does not correspond directly to superficially similar concepts such as "substantive universals" or (in one of its several senses) "universal grammar." That is, it does not constitute a body of categories, rules, and structures that are necessarily shared by all languages. Indeed, above the trivial level on which all languages have nouns, verbs, oral vowels, etc., would argue that such a body could not exist. Language systems are wholes, and earlier parts necessarily get mutated to accommodate later parts. Such a statement would be wholly uncontroversial save for the hostility to process that is shown, quite gratuitously, by genertive grammar.
CONCLUSIONS 299
In fact, what linguistics will have to change is not generative theory, in its essential rather than accidental aspects, but a set of much more widely held beliefs, central to which is the belief that all existing languages are at the same level of development. Beliefs that have no empirical foundation generally stem from some kind of politi cal commitment, and Iam sure that this one, often expressed as "there are no primitive languages," arose as a natural and indeed laudable reaction to the claim that thick lips and subhuman minds underlie the characteristics of both creole and tribal languages. According to 19th--century racists, languages and people alike were ranged along a scale of being from the primitive Bushman with his clicks, grunts, and shortage of artifacts, to the modern Western European with his high pale brow and plethora of gadgets. That was when everyone, racist or anti-racist, did believe that Western Man was superior; the only argument was about how nasty this superiority permitted him to be toward "lesser" breeds. Now that we are rapidly disabusing our selves of this kind of mental garbage, it becomes possible to uncouple language from "level of cultural attainment" and look at it develop mentally without any pejorative implications.
That there is indeed no simple connection between language development and cultural development should be obvious from just two facts. First, many peoples with hunting-and-gathering cultures have languages of horrendous complexity which seem to be a lot further from the bioprogram than "rich cultural" languages like English or Chinese.3 Second, creoie languages originated in the most advanced cultures of their day. I do not mean that the strains of Mozart nightly pervaded the barracoons; I mean that it was in the slave colonies that the Western powers developed the industrial technology and systems of disciplined mass labor which later, with the aid of the
capital amassed by so doing, they generously bestowed upon their own citizens. While creole speakers were working in organized bodies of hundreds or even thousands and operating complex mechanical processes, the leading technocrats of Western Europe were sitting in their own kitchens with their handlooms. So much for simplistic "culture-and-language" equations.
300 ROOTS OF LANGUAGE
However, old beliefs die hard, and assuredly, no matter what l say, racists will pounce on the phrase "developmental differences" and use it to suggest that in some never-to-be-precisely-specified fashion my work "proves" that creoles, or their speakers, or both, are inferior to those who s their third person singulars and cross their as, thes, and zeros when they come to generics. Assuredly, too, progressives, rallying indiscriminately to the struggle, will feel obliged to include this theory in their denunciations, and to accuse me of having called creoles "primi tive languages" and of having revived the despised "baby-talk theory" of creole origins. There is no prophylactic against ignorance. But to anyone who has read this book with even a minimum of care, it should
be apparent that the theory presented here is at an opposite pole to those which sought to derive creoles from the babyish imitations of Europeans' condescending simplifications, and that creoles, far from being "primitive" in anything but the sense of "primary," give us access to the essential bedrock on which our humanity is founded; their re-creation, in the face of what the French sociologist Roger Bastide aptly termed the "Cartesian savagery" of colonialism, repre sents a triumph of the human spirit, and if it were necessary to justify them in such a fashion, l could show a dozen ways in which they are more lucid, more elegant, more logical, and less easy to lie in than English or other European languages. But I will let the dedication of this volume speak for itself.
The idea of language development is not, I would suspect, the only aspect of the present theory that is likely to arouse ideological rather than logical opposition. A great deal of human self"esteem is vested in the belief that there is a qualitative difference between ours and other species, and there is much in this volume that might be thought to weaken such a belief. Weakening such a belief, it is often claimed, may destroy "the Dignity of Man" and lead members of our species to treat other members as if they were no more than beasts.
One could ask a Tasmanian what he thought of this claim, if the advanced techniques of tral\splanted English foxhunters had
CONCLUSIONS 301
left any
Tasmanians to
be
asked. Anyone
who casts
a candid
eye down the
perspective of
human history
must find
it hard
to explain
how the idea
that "people
are no
more than
animals" could
get people
any worse treatment
than they
have gotten
already. Moreover,
as the discussion
of Cartesian
dualism at
the beginning
of Chapter
4 made clear,
the position
of this
theory is
not "Animals
don't have
souls, and we
don't either";
rather, it
is
"We
have souls,
and animals do
too."
The result, I should have thought, would have been to upgrade animals rather than downgrade ourselves.
Further hostility may arise from fears that the theory threatens free will and human perfectibility. If we speak what we are biologically programmed to speak, and if what we are biologically programmed to speak directly reflects the structure of our central nervous system, then the thoughts we think must be biologically programmed too.
.If othr reactions to the theory can be dismissed as knee-jerk alarm1sm, this one cannot. It is, I think, pretty likely that our think ing is species-specific, and therefore, almost by definition, incapable of providing adequate solutions to the problems we see ourselves facing or of answering the questions about the nature of the universe which we find so easy to ask. If this is so, it is so. If it is even possible that it could be so, then the appropriate reaction is not to hide behind a smokescreen of rhetoric, but to determine whether or not it is so. rf it is not so, we have a green light to go ahead with human perfectibility, despite the unpromising auguries of our previous efforts in that direc tion. If it is so, then we have to learn either to live within our limits
or to change those limits, if we can. For one thing is certain: if they exist, they cannot be talked away.
Although I am convinced that future research will show the scope of human freedom to be narrower than we had believed, and although there is no value that I personally rate above human freedom, I do not fmd myself in the least depressed by the prospect. Evolution has maintained a steady increase in the autonomy of its creatures with out, so far as I am aware, a single retrogressive step. We as a species may lack the infinite capacities which some members of it have thought,
302 ROOTS
OF
LANGUAGE
and continue to think, that we possess, but the range of options open to us is still infinitely greater than that available to any other species, . and the peculiar powers we have inherited allow the possibility that we may one day transcend the limits of species. But we will not do this by laying claim to capacities that we do not possess. We will do it only by determining what the limits of our species are, and then decid ing what we want to do about that knowledge.
We may decide that less is more, small is beautiful, and that we must live within our cognitive means, even if so living entails perpetu ating the cycle of injustice, revolt, and more injustice which constitutes the major part of our history to date. But somehow I do not think that this will be our choice.
One recalls the TV game show in which the quizmaster asks, "Will you take the money or open the box?" "Open the box, open the box!" the studio audience roars. I think we would try to open the box of species that encloses us, even if we knew that it was an inside-out Pandora's Box, and that once we had broken :&ee of it, all the terrors of the universe would rain down upon our heads.
'
Notes
CHAPTER 1
I have not found any evidence for rule-ordering in either
]EfmN'aiian Creole English or Guyanese Creole. It would seem that rules apply wherever their structural description is met. It may be that below level of linguistic complexity, rule-ordering is not required.
topic merits further study.
The appropriate response in Hawaiian would have been ka ilio
'THE dog'; ilio alone is quite ungrammatical.
In fact,
it is
very difficult
to answer
substratomaniac argu
ments because
of the
profound vagueness
in which
they are
invariably couched. For
instance,
Alleyne (1979)
states:
"In
dealing
with the
[s\lbstratal] input
source,
we have to
make
allowances
for
plausible
of
change
analogous to
what
in anthropology
are called
reiint<,rpcret;aticms .
. .
. It
is
the
failure
to
make
such
allowances
that
':reduc•s the merit of those statements that seek to refute the derivation 'substratomaniacs' of Atlantic creole verbal systems from general West African verbal systems, because the two do not match up
.ex:ictlv point by point" (emphasis added). Since nowhere are we told kind of allowances to make or what is or is not plausible, this simply amounts to a plea to swallow anything that fits the substrato-
"'
·· .· ·.'
304 ROOTS OF LANGUAGE
maniac case-even such an absurdity as the existence of "generalized West African verbal systems" (if you want to flavor the condescension implicit in that concept, substitute "generalized European verbal systems") , or the greater absurdity that real-world speakers could derive anything from such a chin1era. In the case under discussion, if we took the semantic range of the Japanese form, half the syntax of the English form, and the HPE indifference to tense, we MIGHT wind up with something approximating HCE stei V-but would anyone seriously propose that you can construct a language in this way ? Moreover, if anyone did, the burden would be on that person to show why that particular mix of features from those particular languages, rather than dozens of other possible mixes from the dozen or so lan guages in contact, happened to get chosen. Until substratomaniacs are prepared to deal with problems of this nature, there is really nothing
to argue against.
I am aware, of course, of the research that shows that English
does make realized-unrealized distinctions, although in a much more oblique and clumsy fashion: e.g., the contrast between I believed that John was guilty , but he wasn't and *I realized that John was guilty , but he wasn't. But (a) this distinction is made in that-complement sentences rather than for-to complement sentences; and (b) it is not surface-marked in the form of complementizer differences, but rather has to be inferred from the semantics of individual verbs. Again, it is true that -ing complementation is in general "more £active" than for-to complementation, but many cases go the opposite way, e.g., Bill managed to see Mary (entails Bill saw M ary ) versus Bill dreaded seeing Mary (does not entail Bill saw M ary). For more relevant exam ples, see Chapter 2, examples /31/-/34/.
Alleyne (1979) uses this fact to argue that there never were
antecedent pidginsif there had been, he claims, they should have left traces in contemporary creoles, but he denies the existence of such traces. This argument will be dealt with further in Chapter 2. Meanwhile, the reader may well wonder how much pidgin structure one could legitimately expect to be left in creoles, given the relation ship between the rules of HPE and HCE illustrated in /86/-/111/ above.
\ NOTES 305
CHAPTER
2
Very few writers on creoles seem to have much background or experience in variation study, and on all the numerous occasions on which writers have used historical citations to make claims about earlier stages of creoles, I cannot recall a single one where the possi bility of codeswitching was even mentioned. It may well be that the average fieldhand was monolectal, but the slaves whose speech was most likely to be cited by Europeans were precisely the domestics and artisans who had the most access to superstrate models and who would therefore be the likeliest to be able and willing to adapt their speech in a superstrate direction when interacting with superstrate speakers. Historical citations should therefore be handled with great care, especially when they suggest earlier stages of a creole which would show a heavier superstrate influence than is found in the con temporary basilect of that creole.
It is at least highly questionable whether even an absolute majority of speakers of a single substrate language can influence the formation of a creole. Just after the tum of the century, when creoli" zation must have been actively in progress, the Japanese constituted 50 percent of the population of Hawaii, yet there is virtually no trace of Japanese influence on HCE. It would be interesting to hear the substratomaniac explanation for this fact, but dealing with counter evidence has never been the strong point of that particular approach.
"It is clear that R(eunion) C(reole) is, to quite a large degree,
. a different aninlal from M(auritian) C(reole), Ro(drigues) C(reole), and S(eychelles} C(reole) . . . . There can be no doubt that RC shares many features in common with MC, RoC and SC . . . . The usual explanation
. . . is that RC is a 'decreollzed' version of proto-l(ndian) 0(cean) C(reole) . . . . Another, and perhaps more plausible explanation, is that RC is, on the contrary , a modified version of a variety of French (original emphasis) . . . . The modification of this lete ki French may be seen in terms of convergence . . ." Come is led to conclude that Bourbonnais (the conventional term for proto-IOC} did not originate on the Ile de Bourbon (the old name for Reunion), but he is unable
306 ROOTS
OF LANGUAGE
to say where it did originate, or to commit himself as to whether there was or was not a true proto-IOC. In fact, only au analysis along the lines of Bickerton (197 5) can hope to make sense of RC history; but so far, no such analysis has been attempted.
Note that fak ter 'postman' also lacks au article, although the
defmite article is required in English. But in fact, the NP here is as nonspecific as let. 'THE postman', 'THE doctor', 'THE cashier', etc., are really role titles. Postmen often change routes and schedules, and there is no indication in the sentence that one particular postman might have brought the letter, that either the speaker or the listener could have answered the question "WHICH postman?" or that the identity of the postman had the slightest relevance to the topic.
The anterior-nonauterior distinction is not an easy one for the naive speaker (i.e., anyone who does not speak a creole) to under stand, as I have found in trying to teach it to several classes of graduate students. The reader who wishes to understand this is strongly recom mended to read the account in Bickerton (1975:Chapter 2).
Jansen et al. have a different (and much more complex) explanation involving logical form, propositional islands, truth values, etc. Although they cite Roberts (1975) in another context, they appear to be unaware of the JC examples in that paper, cited above as /27 / and
/28/, as.well as of the other parallels cited here.
There is the possibility that an African source may also be involved. Yoruba, for instance, has both fi and fan (final nasals in
Yoruba orthography mean that the preceding vowel is nasalized, and do not indicate the presence of a nasal consonant). Both verbs have a number of functions, but perhaps the most relevant for creoles are those found in sentences like 6 fi ow6 naa fun mi, lit. 'He take money the give me', or 'He gave me the money'. The similarity to creole
instrumentals is obvious, but if Yoruba fi is the source for JC ft, the
shift in
meaning is
baffling. Fun
is
puzzling in
a slightly different
way. Rowlands (1969)
notes that
"Bilingual Yorubas
tend to
use fen
rather
indiscriminately to
translate 'for',"
making a
joint source
for GC
fu,
SR foe
(phonetically
/fu/)
sound
ver;r plausible.
Also many creoles
use
NOTES 307
verbs meaning 'give' to introduce dative and/or benefactive cases (e.g., HC bay, ST da, etc.). But if SR foe is derived from Yoruba [Un, why did SR select gi (from Eng. give) to mark oblique cases and use foe as a complementizer? Moreover, HCE uses fo as a complementizer without the benefit of any Yoruba model, and French and Portuguese creoles turn Fr. pour 'for' and Pg. para 'for' into complementizers even though no one, to my knowledge, has suggested any verb with the form pu or pa in Yoruba or any West African language that could have served as a model. The question is by no means closed, however ; it merely underlines the fact that we need to know a lot more both about different West African grammars and about what African lan guages were spoken in which creole areas.
Both Christie (1976) for LAC and Corne (1981) for SC propose a tripartite division of verbs into Action, State, and Process. As far as I can tell (neither treatment is particularly rigorous), this proposal arises from a confusion of syntactic rules with semantic interpretation. For instance, it is not syntactic rules that (normally)
bar co-occurrence between stative verbs and nonpunctual markers, as is shown in the discussion of the sentence I bina waan ju no in Bickerton (1975:38), which shows that pragmatic factors can also be involved.
A problem not faced by those who call for the examination of non··European creoles is that it is far from clear that there are any.
.The only languages without a European superstrate which might qualify under the conditions specified in Chapter 1, above, are Ki-Nubi and Juba Arabic. Although the data that have emerged on these lan guages so far are scanty and unclear (and for this reason I have refrained from citing them in the present volume), most of what is available suggests that they follow the creole pattern described here. But even these languages do not have a third condition which may be necessary to qualify for true creolehood: their populations were not, in general, displaced from their native homelands. It is a historical fact that it was only Europeans who uprooted people from their cultures and carried them across thousands of miles of ocean in order to exploit them;
308 ROOTS OF
LANGUAGE
therefore, it is only in European colonies that one would expect to fmd the massive disruption of normal language continuity which would permit the emergence of innate faculties.
However, anyone wishing to use Quow as a historical source should be warned that the above remarks apply only to his rendering of basilectal speakers. Like many whites, he did not feel threatened by illiterate blacks, and could therefore treat them objectively; but he did feel threatened by literate blacks, and in consequence, his ren derings of their speech are spoiled by facetiousness and condescension.
There have been some nonserious nonchallenges, of course. Christie (1976) produced an analysis of LAC which showed it to be not far short of identity with GC but insisted on preserving traditional terms, obvious though it was that these did not fit (getting the distri bution of anterior correct and then calling it past is, to me at least, a quite incomprehensible maneuver). Seuren (1980) endorsed the analysis of Voorhoeve (1957 ), shown in Bickerton (1975) to be intern ally incoherent, and neatly avoided having to consider the latter analy sis by calling it "sociolinguistic" [ sic! ] . But no one has systematically attempted to criticize my analyses of GC, SR, HC, and HCE, for the obvious reasons.
It is perhaps worth observing that no account of Papiamentu that I know of translates I had worked , so that the PP TMA system may not, in fact, differ as much from the classic system as those ac counts might suggest. In general, not only are most analyses of TMA systems incorrect, nine out of ten of them are simply incomplete, lacking the critical information which would make it possible to deter mine how they work. Yet, since these defective analyses buttress Euro centric prejudices, they are hardly ever questioned, let alone criticized.
When I wrote this paragraph, I was quite unaware that Baker had produced an extremely interesting account of the historical de velopment of MC, based in part on an analysis of all currently known historical citations (Baker 197 6), which provides a striking piece of independent support for this analysis. While fini is recorded as a pre verbal marker in 1780, ti is not recorded until 1818; but the ti va
\
NOTES 309
combination is recorded in 1828, while the ti fin combination is not recorded until 1867! Granted that these dates are probably al!late nonstandard speech phenomena tend to have a long and lively life before they tickle the bourgeoisie, cf. olelo pa'i'ai (see Chapter 1) which blushed unseen in Hawaii for nearly a century-there is no need to doubt that their order and spacing are substantially correct. Baker seems not to realize, however, that the 17 80 source derives, on both intemal and external evidence, from a pidgin and not a creole speaker.
Corne (1981) observes that "with state 'Verbals' fin does not occur, since a state has by definition already been attained." Thus, the failure of fin to take over anterior marking in statives is a principled one, and not some inexplicable accident.
Here Corne falls victim to the First Law of Creole Studies, since he himself stated five pages earlier (1977:103) that ti is omitted from subordinate clauses. But I suspect that he was mostly right on this occasion and that h.e had not made allowances for the nonhomogeneiry of SC. l would be prepared to bet that /110/ came from a higher-class, more decreolized consultant.
lf you believe in raising. If you don't, substitute "whatever rule marks the second NP as object of the first V."
As mentioned earlier in this chapter, it seems likely that in reality GC does not have VP as a constituent at the basilectal level. The contrary is assumed here merely in order to simplify the com parison between the English and GC processes, and is not meant to imply any substantive claim about GC structure.
It is interesting to note that while ft-clauses in complement position can refer to one-time actions (as in /210/), and in consequence the higher verb can take punctual marking, preposed ft-clauses can refer only to habitual actions, and in consequence the higher verb must take nonpunctual marking. At the moment I have no idea why this is so.
Washabaugh's analysis of fi differs radically from that made in the present chapter, although there is no reason to suppose that the facts of PIC differ significantly from those of GC. However, since I
310 ROOTS
OF LANGUAGE
have dealt with that analysis in Bickerton (1980), I will not repeat my criticisms of it here.
It would seem highly likely, indeed, that the inadequacies
of existing creole descriptions, often referred to in this volume, have served to diminish, rather than exaggerate, the degree of creole simi larity. To give just one very recent instance, it was long held that the verb-focusing rule discussed earlier in this chapter was not found in the grammars of any of the Indian Ocean creoles. Substratomaniacs could point to the nature of the substratum-Eastern Bantu, Malagasy, and Indian languages- as an explanation of this. Now Corne (p.c.) reports the finding of verb-focusing structures with a copied verb identical to those discussed in this chapter. Substratomaniacs will now doubtless seize on the claim by Baker (1976) that in 1735, 60 percent ·of the nonwhite population of Mauritius was from West Africa. However, this finding is strongly challenged by Chaudenson (1979) on .the basis of historical documents which he claims Baker did not examine; according to Chaudenson, the percentage of West Africans never rose much above 33.
In fact, the outcome of the disagreement is rather irrelevant to
the real issue. Baker's "60 percent" contained 66 percent of speakers from Guinea, and Guinean languages differ markedly in structure from the Kwa languages which are usually claimed as the source of creole structures. On Baker's own figures, the Kwa speakers in Mauritius in 1735 must have amounted to about 130! Within a few years, the population of Mauritius topped the 10,000 mark, swelled by recruits from India and Madagascar (Baker admits that hardly any Kwa speakers arrived after 1735). The question that substratomaniacs have to answer is: how did 130 people manage to impose their grammar (assuming they had a common one, which is a big assumption) upon a population in which they were outnumbered 100 to 1?
I am only too well aware that Piaget draws conclusions from
his studies quite contrary to those drawn here. That he does so, how ever, has always seemed to me baffling in light of the fact that the developmental stages he posits bear a nativistic explanation much more
'
NOTES 311
easily than they do an experiential one. But there is not space here to attempt a reinterpretation of Piagetian findings, desirable though such an activity might seem. We. will see in the next chapter, however, that some linguistic findings of Piaget's disciples can very easily (and very fruitfully ) be reinterpreted in a nativistic manner (see especially the discussion of Bronckart and Sinclair [1973] ) ,
CHAPTER S
Even today, I know of no study of child language acquisition in any language which follows the simple and obvious procedure of noting the very first emergence of a given form or structure in a child's speech, then following the development of that feature until Brown's "criterion" is reached-meanwhile noting what that form or structure alternated with in those contexts where it was inappropriate, as well as those where it was appropriate, with the aim of figuring out why variation occurred and what the form or structure might mean to the child. Normally, second-language acquisition trots along obediently in the footsteps of first-language acquisition, but here roles are reversed, as my student, Tom Huebner, is about to complete a dissertation which applies the above approach to the acquisition of English by an immi grant Hmong speaker (see also Huebner 1979). The field is wide open for similar first-language studies, which should help to revolutionize our understanding of acquisition.
In fact, rather than such a conflict, the present theory entails a division of labor. The innate component is necessary in order to get the child into a position where he can learn any human language, for as Fodor (1975) argues (see below), it is impossible to learn a language unless you already know a language. Some other kind of component is necessary to get the child from the innate creole-like grammar to the idiosyncratic grammars of Italian, Yoruba, Akawaio, Walbiri, or what ever language that particular child is going to have to learn as part of his socialization. Because I have not discussed this second component in the present volume, the reader should not conclude that I deny its
312 ROOTS OF LANGUAGE
importance. My failure to say anything about it is, as I said, strategic; until we know where the innate component stops, we cannot know where any other devices start.
Or at least it is implausible to suppose that he could utilize them if he did not have some overall conceptual framework in which past tense (punctual, in our treatment) was associated with unique events and present tense (nonpunctual, in our treatment) was associ ated with generic events. How such an arbitrary framework could be derived from experience is totally opaque to me. But it might be derivable from species-specific or even genus-specific neural wiring, along the lines suggested in Chapter 4.
Students of the acquisition of Turkish please note: it would be most revealing to analyze 43 hours of a single child's speech (one hour at three-week intervals from 2:0 to 4:6) in order to determine exactly how he moves from a state-process to a direct-indirect analysis, along the lines indicated in Note 1above.
One of
these exceptions
is Miller
(1978).
In
a brilliant
flash of
insight, Miller
suggests that
"perhaps the
difference between
go
and went
is
used to
mark something
else, like
momentary happen
ings as
opposed to
persisting states";
and, in
discussing forms
like wented
,
adds
that "if
they did
not understand
went
as
incorporating a
concept of
pastness, then
adding pastness
with -ed
would
not seem
redundant."
However, a
stiff dose
of Reichenbach
and formal
logic enables
him to
climb back
into the
sheepfold of
the conventional
wisdom. It
should be
noted, however,
that one
of his
presuppositions that
forms like
wented
are
quite uncommon
in child
speech-fails
to take
into account
forms like
did
he
went?,
he
didn't
went,
etc.,
which are semantically
identical and
much more
common. These
forms are
discussed in
Hurford (197
5), Kuczaj
(1976),
Fay (1978),
Maratsos and
Kuczaj (1978),
and Erreich
et al.
(1980);
but unfortunately,
it seems
not to
have occurred
to any
of these
writers to
look at
the sentences
with "double
pasts" and
the sentences
with "single
pasts" in
their appropriate
contexts and
see whether,
semantically or
pragmatically, there are
any differences
betwn
them. This
is the
first thing
rhat
NOTES 313
an investigator
should do,
as a
matter of
simple
routine, whenever
he is confronted
by variable
data of
this kind.
The question is the more interesting in that the form auxiliary
+ past participle- the first to be acquired by French and Italian learners
-is among the last to be acquired by English learners. Maratsos (1979) observes of the latter that "its late acquisition, coming after children hear it used around them for years, probably stems from its subtle meaning," and indeed it is surely the case that the meaning of the "composite past" in French or Italian (a punctual meaning) is easier for the child to grasp than the meaning of the English perfect (a com pletive meaning). But this only opens up a host of other issues. For instance, if the meaning of English perfect is "relevance to present state," and if, as Antinucci and Miller suggest, the child assigns his early past marking on the basis of "relevance to present state," why should the meaning of perfect be so "subtle" in the child's view, and why should it not be the first, rather than the last, verb form to be acquired? Further, is it a matter of mere coincidence that perfect should be the last form to be acquired by both children learning English and speakers of an English creole in the course of decreolization (see
.Bickerton [197
5:126ff.]
for details
on the
latter process)?
If, as
suggested later
in this
chapter, decreolization
and the
later stages
of acquisition are
processes which
show a
principled relationship,
then there is
no coincidence,
but rather
a joint
reflection of one
of the
difficulties involved
in getting
from the
bioprogram to
English.
For instance,
"double pasts"
of the
kind discussed
in Note
5 above a:re
assumed in
orthodox generative
accounts
(e.g.,
Hurford 197
5) to
stem from
a process
which copies
the past-tense
marker in Aux
onto the
verb-stem, as
in the
familiar "Aux-Hopping"
rules, but then
fails to
delete the
original occurrence
of past
tense under the
Aux node
(but see
Matatsos and
Kuczaj [1978]
for criticism
of this
proposal). The
fact that
"double
pasts" occur
so frequently
while "double-WHs"
don't occur
at all
casts strong
doubt on
the assumption
that children's
mistakes stem
from incomplete
applications of
standard
transformational
processes.
314 ROOTS
OF
LAt"IGUAGE
8, In other words, creolization and decreolization correspond to the two (overlapping) halves of the acquisition process proposed at the beginning of this chapter. The first half, dominated by the bio program, corresponds to creolization, but the second half, dominated by other components, in which the child bridges the gap between bioprogram and target language, corresponds to decreolization. The only significant difference would seem to be that creolization and decreolization cannot overlap, while the evolution of the bioprogram and the pressure from the target language can, do, and indeed must overlap. However, since this difference stems directly from purely pragmatic differences between the circumstances of the "normal" child and the circumstances of the creole-creating child, it can in no way invalidate the correspondence.
See also the theoretical discussion of this process in Bickerton (1980).
Why children don't do what they don't is often even more
mysterious (for the conventional wisdom) than why they do what they do, so that questions such as the one at the beginning of this paragraph are studiously avoided. However, there is no need to avoid such questions with the present model; why they don't do what they don't is in fact loaded with clues as to why they do do what they do.
1L It should not need to be emphasized that, fast, there is no evidence for "hyperstrategic" devices as such, beyond the problems whose solution might seem to call for them, and second, that if they did exist, they would constitute an innate component no less surely (although with far less justification) than does the bioprogram proposed here.
CHAPTER 4
The exchange, which took place at the New York Academy of Sciences Conference on Language Origins in 1975, should be quoted at length; it demonstrates the orthogonal approaches and seemingly
invincible mutual incomprehensibility that have bedeviled glottogenetic
\
NOTES 315
studies better than could countless pages of exegesis:
Hamad: Let me just ask a question which everyone else who has been faithfully attending these sessions is surely burning to ask. If some rules you have described constitute universal constraints on all languages, yet they are not learned, nor are they somehow logically necessary a priori, how did language get that way?
Chomsky: Well, it seems to me that would be like asking the question how does the heart get that way? I mean, we don't learn to have a heart, we don't learn to have arms rather than wings. What is interesting to me is that the question should be asked. It seems to be a natural question; everyone asks it. And I think we should ask why people ask it.
The question "Why do you ask that question?" is of course a stalling ploy familiar to psychoanalysts; indeed, it was programmed into the "robot psychiatrist" with which some ingenious psychologists were able to simulate, with surprising plausibility, a therapeutic session, The present writer believes, as firmly as Chomsky, that we get language like
we get a heart and arms, yet I entirely fail to see why Harnad's question
was an illegitimate one or why it does not deserve, or rather demand, an answer. How we first got arms or a heart are questions so phylo genetically remote and so unrelated to the mental life of our species that Chomsky is right to dismiss them as not worth asking (except, presumably, for those whose professional specialism they are). But the evolution of language is so recent that we may reasonably suppose that its present nature is still conditioned by those origins, and its crucial role in distinguishing between us and other species (while any number of other species have arms and hearts) ls such that it must strongly influence, even if it does not wholly determine, all that we think and do. Thus, to put the determination of its origins on a par
with the determination of the origins of physical organs seems to me a piece of evasive perversity,
316 ROOTS
OF
LANGUAGE
Hewes (1975) provides a fairly exhaustive account of these theories.
In the Hockett and Ascher "Flintstone," the key development
is a hominid who, in encountering food and danger at the same time, gives half the call for food and half the call for danger. Not one shred of even the most oblique evidence from ethological or other studies, or even the authors' own ratiocinations, is adduced in support of this inherently unlikely development, beyond their admission that they can't think of any other way language could have begun.
However, I have some (admittedly anecdotal) evidence that
dogs use cognitive mapping in recognition. Our dog, Rufus, will rush from the opposite end of the apartment to greet my wife when she comes home, but on meeting her on campus he ignores or even recoils from her until she is just a couple of feet from him, whereupon he performs his usual acts of greeting. It is not easy to account for such behavior unless (as is the case with us) part of the way he recognizes people has to do with a network of particular associations. He recog nizes her where he expects her to be, and fails to recognize her else where, in the same way (and why not for the same reason? ) that we fail to recognize, on the beach or in a restaurant, the clerk or cashier we may have met dozens of times in a work setting.
Nothing Blake ever wrote should be taken lightly. In the
broad brush-strokes with which we have to draw our cognitive maps,
is worse, we locked into stereo-
typic ( k ike, freak , faggot are some pernicious examples) which lead us to deny one another's individuality. A creature that could compute from percepts rather than concepts would out shine us as the sun outshines the moon (more on this in Language and
Species ).
Some scholars remain unimpressed by the evidence that apes have concepts. For instance, Seidenberg and Petitto (1979) seem tp
need reassurance that before and after Washoe signed water-bird he did not also sign banana-bird , water-berry, banana-berry-in other words, they at least envisage the possibility that signing apes proceed like
NOTES 317
demented computers, throwing off random strings of signs (they have, after all, been reinforced for signing) from which biased experimenters simply pick out the rare one which happens, by pure chance, to be contextually appropriate. Leaving aside the unmerited slur which this casts on the morals and/or wide-awakeness of many dedicated re searchers, the approach adds a Cartesian twist to the old behaviorist nativist controversy: scholars who. are behaviorists with regard to animals and nativists with regard to people. It is more parsimonious as well as more fruitful to suppose that when animals similar to our selves evince behavior like ours, similar mechanisms underlie both sets of phenomena.
That the nature of linguistic facts can be determined by the order in which they necessarily occur and/or originally occurred has already been suggested in the contrast between the development of tense that takes place in learners of English and that which takes place in learners of Italian. Those who continue to believe (see Note 1, this chapter) that there is nothing to be learned from learning how language developed should read and compare these two cases and then ask themselves whether their attitude is not one of simple obscurantism.
This is not, of course, to say that older structures do not undergo changes, adaptations, and linkages. The neural dysfunction known as Gilles de la Tourette's syndrome is one that affects the limbic area, yet its victims shout lexical obscenities as well as more animal-like cries, ln general, lexical utterances are under cortical con trol, but in the case of those which express strong emotion, like non verbal vocal utterances, linkage between the speech areas of the neo- cortex and the limbic area must have been forged at some stage sub sequent to the farmer's development.
In fact, discussion of semantics would be clearer if semantic prime were reserved exclusively for category distinctions of potentially universal application (like the SNSD, the PNPD, etc.) and if what are sometimes referred to as "semantic primes" were referred to as primi tive concepts. However, note that primitive concepts are not necessarily constructed out of semantic primes.
318 ROOTS OF LANGUAGE
The reading "The answer is there/" is of course not intended.
It is an open question whether any language could make the past-present-future distinction before the culture that used it produced any kind of time-measuring device. The fact that time-enslaved linguists may have analyzed preliterate languages as having such a distinction is, of course, no proof of anything-they have consistently done the same for creoles and they have been consistently wrong in so doing. In fact, there already exist more careful studies of such languages (e.g., Arnott 1970, Welmers 1973) which explicitly recognize the absence of the characteristic Western temporal framework. Analysis of TMA systems is too subtle to be left to logicians.
In Bickerton 1974.
Another common source is (phonologically salient) auxiliary verb forms in the superstrate. However, since there could not have been auxiliaries before there were auxiliaries, the situations of creole and primordial languages will differ in at least this respect.
Order in terms of distance from the verb is of course intended,
and not the left-to-right ordering of surface constituents.
It was observed in Chapter 2 that the similarities between creole languages were in many cases closer and more consistent in the semantic component than they were in the syntactic component. This result would issue very naturally if the semantics of language depended on relatively old neural structnres while syntax depended
·partly on relatively new neural structures but also partly on extraneural factors intrinsic to the task of building a linear vocal language. These latter factors might in a number of cases permit more than one possible solution to a given structural problem, whereas with semantic struc tures, single solutions would be imposed in almost all cases.
CHAPTER S
1. Indeed, one objection to the hypothetical history oflanguage given in the preceding chapter might be that many essential prerequi sites of language, such as the development of the neural and physio·
\
NOTES 319
logical mechanisms
required for
vocalization ,
the lateralization
of the brain,
and the growth
of auditory
processing mechanisms.
or "tem
plates" which
, as
suggested in
some fascinating
work by
Marler and
associates (Marler
1977,
1980;
Marler and
Peters 1979,
etc.), show
striking parallels
to those
of avian
species, have
simply been
ignored. However, these
omissions
in
no way
reflect my
estimate of
the impor
tance of
such developments.
The reasons
for them
are threefold.
First, reasons
of space
(and the
overall purpose
of this
volume) pre
vented me
from describing
everything that
went into
the makeup
of language; second,
these other
developments have
been excellently
treated elsewhere;
and third,
I wanted
to deal precisely
with those aspects
of language
development which
have been
most systematically
ignored or
misunderstood. Certainly,
such omissions
were not
for the purpose
of strengthening
my case
since all
the omitted
developments are much
more obviously
the product
of the
genetic code
than the
developments discussed
in this
volume.
I certainly
do not
wish to
suggest by
this that
no sooner
had language reached
the creole
level than
agriculture began.
There may well
have been
an interval
of tens
of thousands
of years between
these two even
ts, years
during which
cognitive maps
became only
gradually more complex;
or the
interval may
have been
quite short.
There is
no way, at
present, that
we can
choose between
these alternatives-or
even prove
that language
in its
present form
did not
exist two
million
years ago,
although the
latter possibility
seems intrinsically
unlikely.
I write "seem to be" because only empirical investigation will reveal whether such languages are indeed as far from the bio program as our intuitions would suggest. One test will be the time taken by children to acquire the main grammatical structures of given
languages. rt was often claimed (at a time when acquisition had hardly
been studied!) that all languages were equally easy for children to learn. This belief was, of course, simply deduced from the "all-languages-are developmentally-equal" dogma. Work by Slobin and his associates already suggests this may be quite far from the truth.
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\
Name
Index
Aaronson, D., 321
Adam (child subject), 154 Akbar the Great, 289 Aksu, A. A., 161, 332
Alleyne, M. C., 2, 43, 48, 78, 82,
211, 303-4, 321
Antinucci, F., 163, 172-74, 313,
321
Aristotle, 44
Arnott, D. W., 318, 321
Ascher, R., 219, 316, 327
Bailey, B., 47, 68, 321
Bailey, C.-J. N., 89, 105, 321
Baker, P., 60-61, 69, 89, 308,
310, 321
Bastide, R., 300
Bellugi, U., 187, 190-91, 328
Berlin, B., 229, 238-39, 241,
243, 322
Bever, T., 62, 273, 292, 322
Bickerton, D., 1, 7, 8, 12, 28,
34, 43, 47, 58, 59, 68, 73,
77, 79, 80, 85, 88, 89, 96-97,
105, 160, 164, 192, 193,
306-8, 310, 313-14, 318,
322
Blake, W., 227, 316, 322
Blakemore, C., 233, 323
Bollee, A., 69, 83-85, 89, 323
Bowerman, M., 137, 141, 181,
198, 201, 205-6, 323
Bradley, E. A., 223, 323
Bradshaw, J., 120, 292, 323
Bronckart, J., 163, 165-71, 173,
256, 311, 323
Brown, R., 137, 142, 147, 149,
154-61, 181-85, 311, 323
Bruner, J. S., 136, 138, 139, 323
Burton, R., 222, 323
336 NM:!E INDEX
NAME INDEX
337
Campbell,
C.
B.,
237,
323
Carayol, M., 89, 323
Cazden, C., 155, 324
Chaudenson, R., 3, 89, 310, 323,
324
Chomsky, N., 36, 101, 105, 113,
126, 136, 137, 139, 142, 143,
171, 214-15, 286, 297, 315,
324
Christie, P., 307-8, 324
Clark, E. V., 188, 201, 208, 211,
239-40, 244-45, 324
Clark, H. H., 188, 201, 208, 211,
23940, 324
Clark, R., 189, 324
Comrie, B., 90-91, 177, 324
Corne, C., 44, 54, 57-58, 62, 64,
69, 71, 83-85, 88, 89, 92-93,
95, 305, 307, 309-10, 324-25
Cromer, R. F., 140-41, 325
Daeleman, J., 49, 325
DeCamp, D., 47, 89, 325, 328
de Saussure, F., 104, 214
Descartes, R., 220-21, 226, 295,
300-301, 316
de Valois, P. L., 239, 325
Dillard,
J.
L.,
49,
325
D
Hanlon,
C.,
137,
323 ingwall,
w.
0.,
44,
237.
266, Harlow,
H.
F.,
225,
326 325 Hamad,
S.
R.,
215,
315,
326 Heraclitus,
215
Erreich, A., 188, 312, 325
Eve (child subject), 154, 156
Fay, D., 312, 325
Ferraz, L., 75-77, 79, 325
Fletcher, P., 158, 325
Fodale, P., 71-72, 329
Fodor, J. A., 207-8, 254, 311,
325
Forman, M., 118, 325
Frederick II, 289
Garman, M., 325
Geschwind, N., 230, 325
Gill, T., 236, 274, 326, 331
Giv6n, T., 8, 12, 105, 120, 292,
322, 326
Glock, N., 121, 326
G!ucksberg, S., 271, 326
Goilo, E. R., 87, 326
Goldberg, R., 224
Goodman, M., 43, 326
Grimes, J. E., 121, 326
Hall, R. A., Jr., 58, 83, 97-98,
326
Halle, M., 105, 137, 324
Halliday, M. A. K., 189, 326
Hamilton, J., 271, 326
Hancock, I. F., 43, 326
Hering, E., 239, 326
Herzog, M., 105, 334
'
Hewes, G., 215, 316, 327
Highfield, A., 333
Hill, J., 216, 327
Hill, K. C., 327
Hockett, C. F., 219, 287, 316,
327
Hodos, W., 237, 323, 327
Huebner, T., 311, 327
Hurford, J., 312-13, 327
Huttar, G. L., 48, 119, 327
Hyman, L. H., 120, 327
Hymes, D., 140, 327
Jacobs, G. H., 239, 325
Jakobson, R., 246
James IV, 289
Jansen, B., 48, 50, 60, 121, 123,
124, 308, 327
Jerison, H. J., 226, 327
Joos,
M.,
159,
327
Karmiloff-Smith, A.,
147,
150, Markey,
T.
L.,
71-72,
329 327 Marler,
P.,
319,
329 Kay,
P.,
238-39, 327 241,
243,
322, Marshack,
A.,
265,
329 Marshall,
J.
C.,
208,
329
Keil, F., 252-54, 328
Klima, E., 187, 190-91, 328
Koopman, H., 48, 50, 60, 110,
112, 114, 121, 123, 124, 327'
328
Kuczaj, S. A., 155, 158, 312-13,
328, 329
Laberge, S., 8, 331
Labov, W., 9, 78, 105, 328, 334
Lamendella, J., 261-63, 273,
282, 328
Lana (chimpanzee), 236
Lancaster, J., 326
Langendoen, D. T., 62, 292, 322
Larimore, N.F., 117, 328
Lashley, K. S., 223, 328
Lee, G., 126
Lefebvre, C., 328
Le Page, R. B., 47, 328
Leucippus, 44
Li, C. N., 120, 328
Lichtveld, ]. M., 85, 333
Limber, J., 181-85, 328
Linden, E., 217, 328
Lord, C., 118, 119, 329
Luria, A., 208-9, 211, 329
Maratsos, M. P., 147-49, 151,
154, 312-13, 329
McDaniel, C. K., 239, 327, 329
McNei!l, D. A., 159, 195, 330
Meillet, A., 90
Miller, G. A., 312, 330
Miller, R., 163, 172-74, 313, 321
Moorghen, P.-M., 89, 330
Most, L., 216, 327
Mounin, G., 234-36, 330
Mozart, W. A., 299
338 NAME Ll\fDEX
NAME INDEX 339
Muysken, P., 48, 50, 60, 73-77,
121, 123, 124, 280-81, 327'
330
Nagara, S., 29, 330
Odo, C., 8, 34, 322
Papen, R., 69, 71, 330
Passingham , R. E., 225, 330
Perlman, A. M., 24, 57, 59, 330
Peters, S., 319, 329
Petitto, L.A., 269, 316, 332
Piaget, J., 133, 236, 310-11, 330
Polome, E., 293, 330
Premack, D., 235
Psammetichus, 289
Quine, W., 278, 331
Quow (M. McTurk, pseud.), 74, 308, 331
Raleigh, M.J., 219, 332
Reichenbach, H., 177, 278-79,
312, 331
Reinecke, J., 59, 73, 331
Rens, L. L. E., 4, 331
Rieber, R. W., 321
Roberts, P. A., 59, 123, 306, 331
Ross, J. R., 36, 331
Rowlands, E. C., 306, 331
Rufus (dog), 316
Rumbaugh, D., 236, 274, 326,
331
Sag, !., 155, 331
Samarin, W. J., 13, 331
Sankoff, G., 3, 81, 331
Sarah (child subject ), 154
Sarah (chimpanzee), 235
Schieff!in, B. S., 198, 202, 331
Seidenberg, M. S., 269, 316, 332
Seuren, P. A. M., 308, 332
Silverstein, M., 38, 332
Sinclair, H., 163, 165-71, 173,
256, 311, 323
Slobin, D., 140, 161, 197-98,
205-6, 319, 332
Smith, M. E., 131, 332
Snow, C., 136, 139, 332
Somers, F., 254, 332
Spuhler, J. N., 272, 332
Steklis, H. D., 219, 332
Stephenson, P., 219, 241-42, 332
Taylor, D., 43, 78, 97, 333
Thompson , R. W., 43, 333
Thompson, S. A., 120, 328
Tsuzaki, S. M., 59, 333
Valdman, A., 47, 89, 333
Valian, V., 325
Valkoff, M. F., 63, 75-77, 333
Voorhoeve, J., 58, 74, 83, 85,
123, 308, 333
Warden, D., 147, 150, 333
Washabaugh, W., 54, 117, 309,
333
\
Washoe (chimpanzee), 226
Weinreich, U., 105, 334
Weisberg, R. W., 271, 326
Wehners, W. E., 318, 334
Whinnom, K., 7, 43, 334
Williams, W. R., 123, 334
Wilson, W. A. A., 64, 82, 334
Winzemer, J., 325
Woisetschlaeger, E., 177, 334
Woolford, E., 114, 334
Young, J. Z., 218, 223, 284,
323, 334
I
l
j
Subject
Ind
ex
A-over-A principle, 36-37, 41, 64-65
acquisition strategies, 140-41, 201-2, 204, 212
adjectives, 68-69
African languages, 48-50, 118-20, 122, 303-4, 307
agriculture, 287-88, 319
akualele, 19
analogy, 186-87, 189
Annobones, 63
anterior tense, 58, 77, 79, 81, 83, 85-88, 91-93, 284-86, 306, 309
Aplysia, 282
articles, 22-26, 39, 56-57, 247-48
acquisition of, 147-54 Australian Aboriginal creoles, 4 Austronesian, 120, 292-93
Aux-hopping, 313
Babel, Tower of, 290 Bantu languages, 49, 131
behaviorism, 317
\
342 SUBJ
ECT
INDEX
Belize Creole, 103
Bible, the, 289-90
Bini, 79
"biological reality," 294 brain size, 226
Brazil, 66
Caho Verdiense, 47
"cafeteria J'rinciple," 49
call systems, 219-20, 267
Caribbean, 46, 49, 82
Caribbean creoles, 48, 52, 67, 71, 117, 132
causative, 108, 118
causative-noncausative distinction (CNCD) , 196-203, 212, 272
cave-bear, 269-71
change-of-state verbs, 172-75
chimpanzee, 217, 225, 234-37, 243, 264, 269, 274
language capacities of, 268 China, 7 .
Chinese, 11, 21, 30, 120, 132, 299
clefting, 104, 106-7, 273-74
cocoliche, 7
cognitive mapping, 225, 229, 231-32, 235-36, 264, 270-71, 290, 316,
319
colonialism, 2, 296, 299-300, 207-8
color discrimination, 239
color terms, 237-43
complementation, factive, 99-100, 105-7
of perception verbs, 99-103, 109-10
sentential, 30-33, 59-61, 99-117 passim, 181c87
completive, 89-92, 94
comprehension strategies, 273-74
conceptualization, 152, 221-22, 227, 230-35, 237-38, 295, 316
contiguity constraints, 240-43, 245-•\6, 249, 251-55
SUBJECT lNDEX 343
continuity, paradox of, 216-17 copula, 55, 63, 67-68
counterfactuals, 93
creole (see also under individual creole languages) and acquisition, 140, 159, 180-81, 210
definition of, 2, 4
description of, 44-45, 310 and language origins, 287-89 texts, 74
Crioulo, 55-56, 63-64, 67, 77, 81-82, 97
cross-modal association, 230
cultural evolution, 291
culture, 265, 287, 290, 296, 299
Curao, 82
dative-benefactive case, 128-29
decreolization, 46-47, 53, 58-59, 85-86, 131, 164, 191-94, 313-14
deer, 229
de la Tourette's syndrome, 317
directionals, 127
discourse, 20, 275
Djuka, 119, 121-23
dreams, 225, 254, 284
Dryopithecus, 216, 226, 237, 243, 264
dualism, 134, 220, 295, 301
Egyptian, 293
English, 4, 7, 10, 18, 60-61, 86, 95, 286, 299
articles, 22, 24-25, 147-48, 247-48
causatives, 196-97
complements, 99-100, 106-8, 304
movement rules, 21, 52-53, 107
phonology, 122-23
questions, 70-71
344 SUBJECT li'\!DEX
relativization, 34, 291
articles, 56, 247-48
SUBJECT INDEX 345
tenses,
29-30,
83,
87,
91-92,
159,
166,
258,
313
English acquisition, 153-54, 175-76, 179, 197-200, 202, 205-6, 209,
212, 317
English creoles, 79-80
Equi-NP deletion, 126
ergative languages, 196-97
evidential tense, 161
evolution, I44, 216-17, 220-21, 225-26, 237, 241, 262-63, 287, 289,
294-96, 315
existential, 66-67, 244-46, 250-52
extraposition, 106
Filipino pidgin speakers, 10-13, 15, 18, 22-23, 25, 34, 40, 56
First Law (of Creole Studies), 83, 98, 309
"Flintstones approach," 215-16, 238, 265, 316
folktales, 84
free will, 301
French, 3-4, 56, 61, 70-71, 80, 83, 86, 95, 165-66, 305
French acquisition, 165, 167, 172
French creoles, 47, 79, 307
frogs, 222
generalization, 155, 161, 176, 180, 201-2, 205-6, 227
generative theory, 297-99
generic naming, 229, 234
generic NP, 23-24, 26, 248
Germanic, 293
Goa, 4
gorilla, 263
Guinean languages, 131, 310
Guyanais, 103, 119
Guyanese Creole, 44, 46, 74, 124, 303, 306
adjectives, 68-69
\
complementation, 100-117 passim, 185-86
completive, 80
copula, 67
directionals, 131
existential-possessive, 66-67
movement rules, 52-55, 125
negation, 65-66, 192, 195
"passive1" 72
questions, 70-71
relativization, 62
TMA system, 58-59, 77, 83, 85-86, 88, 91-97, 160, 164, 255, 258,
308
habitual, 97-98
habituation, 282-83
Haitian Creole, 1, 58-59, 64, 66, 70, 80, 83, 85, 94, 97-98, 103, 110,
112, 114, 307
hapa-haole, 7
Hawaii, 4-7, 41, 46, 139
Hawaiian, 7, 10-11, 25-27, 30, 79, 303
Hawaiian Creole English, 1, 8-9, 15-17, 43-44, 46, 73, 133, 210, 303,
305
articles, 22--26, 56
complementation, 30-33, 61, 307
copula, 67
directionals, 131-32
existential-possessive, 66
movement rules, 19-22, 51-56
negation, 66, 192
"passive," 7 2
questions, 71
relativization, 33-37, 62, 291 rules of (formally stated), 38-41
346 SUBJECT
INDEX
subject-copying, 33-37, 64
TMA system, 26-30, 58-59, 69, 79, 85-86, 164, 303
word order, 18
Hawaiian Pidgin English, 7-9, 13-18, 20-22, 24-26, 28-29, 30-34, 37-40,
46, 56, 71, 78-79, 81, 153, 304
hominids, 263-67, 274, 316
possible language capacities of, 268 Hopi, 161
hunting accidents, 228
hypothesis formation, 135, 136-37, 145, 152-53, 159, 203-5, 213
idealization, 105, 137, 142, 214
imperative, 31-32, 156-58
Indian Ocean creoles, 55, 67, 69, 71, 77, 80, 88-89, 95, 97, 305-6, 310
infinitive, 182-83
inherent aspect, 17 0-71
innateness (of language), 134, 136-38, 144, 158-62, 171-72, 208-9,
211, 311, 314-15
irrealis modality, 58, 77-79, 81, 93, 95-97, 257-58, 284-86
Italian, 1, 174, 178
Italian acquisition, 172, 174-76, 179-80, 197-98, 212, 317
iterative, 255-57
Jamaican Creole, 46, 61, 68, 72, 79-80, 97, 171, 256, 258, 306
Japan, 7, 27
Japanese, 239, 293, 304
Japanese pidgin speakers, 9-13, 15, 18-20, 22-23, 25, 30, 305
Juba Arabic, 307
kahuna, 19
Kaluli, 198
Kaluli acquisition, 199-200, 202-3, 205, 212
Kikongo, 49
Ki-Nubi, 307
\
SUBJECT INDEX 347
Korea, 7
Korean pidgin speakers, 15 Krio, 80, 94, 117
Kwa languages, 49-50, 120, 131, 310
language, acquisition of, 5, 105, 133-35, 136-213 passim, 269, 280, 282
as communication, 218 external modeling of, 218
gestural origins theory of, 215-16, 219
origins of, 1, 133, 209, 211-13, 214-293 passim
language acquisition device (LAD), 136
language bioprogram, 133-35, 144-46, 161-63, 172, 175, 180-81, 190,
199-200, 205, 208-12, 285, 290, 293, 297-98, 314, 319
Latin, 1
learning, 138-40, 144, 208-9, 223, 236, 295-97
Lesser Antillean Creole, 59, 79, 307-8
lexicalization, 241-44, 248-50, 255, 276, 295
linguistic change, 46, 99, 105, 123, 130, 246-47, 292-93
location, 244-46, 250-52
locative verbs, 26, 29, 67-68
M constraint, 254
Macao, 4
mammalian communication systems, 216-17
manual channel, 264, 267
Mauritian Creole, 61, 70, 88-89, 94, 96, 305, 308
Mauritius, 310
memory, 223-24, 232-35, 283-85
model-building, 280-81, 289
mothers, role in acquisition oflanguage, 139-40, 213 movement rules, 63, 190
in GC, 51-56, 104, 106-7, 111-17
in HCE, 17-22, 38, 53-56
in Sranan, 124-28
348 SUBJECT INDEX
multipropositional sentences, 276-77
naturalness, 280, 291
negation, 65-66, 191-94
and nondefmites, 195-96
Negerhollands, 73-75, 77 _
neural infrastructure, 222-25, 232-33, 239-42, 274, 280-81, 283, 289,
312, 318-19
New Guinea, 3, 120
nonpunctual aspect, 27-30, 58, 78, 97, 187, 255-57, 282, 286, 309,
312
object-fronting, 19, 21, 52
obligation, 96, 109
olelo pa'i'ai (pidgin Hawaiian), 7 , 309 "order of acquisition," 142-43, 177, 179
ownership, 244-46, 250-52
Palenquero, 77, 86
Pandora's box, 302
Papia Kristang, 65-66, 77, 79, 86
Papiamentu, 57, 66, 71, 73, 75, 77, 80-81, 85-88, 302
SUBJECT INDEX 349
pidgin-creole cycle, 78, 82, 122-24, 132, 304
pidginization, 8-9, 98, 293
play, 236
Pleistocene, 287
plural, 149, 152, 155
population ratios, 46
Portugal, 7
Portuguese, 21, 25, 56, 66, 70, 73, 79-81, 86, 122-23
Portuguese creoles, 4, 47, 63, 67, 80, 86, 123, 307
Portuguese pidgins, 81
possession, 66-67, 244-46, 250-52
predicability tree, 252-55
predicate-fronting, 19, 21
prediction, 226, 229, 267, 270
primitive concepts, 317 "primitive languages," 299-300 problem-solving devices, 41-42
processing time, 271
Propositional Island Constraint (PIC), 101-2, 112-14, 126
Providence Island Creole, 117, 309
psychological verbs, 277
Puerto Rico, 7
Papuan
,
292-93
parataxis, 14-15, 275
parsing problems, 277-78
passive, 71-72, 273-74
past tense, 83-87, 92, 155, 163-81passim
percepts, 221-234 passim, 239, 295
perfect, English, 313
perfectibility, human, 301
Phillipine languages, 21, 30
Phillipines, 7
pidgin, definition of, 2
effability of, 13-14
'
Punctual-nonpunctual distinction (PNPD) ,
282-85
questions, WH-, 70-71, 187-91
yes-no, 70, 187-88, 190-91
racism, 299-300
realized-unrealized distinction, 32-33, 60-61 recall {of memory), 225-26 recapitulationism, 261-63
relativization, 14, 34-37, 40, 62-65, 291-92
Reunion Creole, 3-4, 46, 54, 71, 88, 305
16.4.-81 passn' u ' 212' 258 '
350 SUBJECT INDEX
rules, of early creoles, 124 origins of, 6
phrase-structure, 38"40, 124, 184-85
types of, 50-51, 130
Sio Tomense, 1, 66, 70, 73, 75-77, 79, 97, 103, 119, 258, 307
Saramaccan, 49, 58-59, 121-23
second-language learning, 146, 310
semantk classes, 203, 219
semantic primes, 204, 246-48, 251-52, 255, 317
semantic space, 90, 98, 240, 242, 245, 247, 249-50, 255, 258
Senegal Kriol, 73-74
Serbo-Croat acquisition, 197-98, 212
Seychelles Creole, 56-57, 59, 62-64, 67, 71, 73, 75, 77, 83-85, 87-89,
92-96, 305, 307' 309
Spanish, 21, 87, 258
specific-nonspecific distinction (SNSD), 24, 58, 146-54, 162, 207, 212,
234, 248, 257-58, 306
Specified Subject Condition (SSC), 126
Sranan, 1, 4, 46, 58-61, 79-80, 83, 85, 88, 93, 118, 121-30, 305
state-process distinction (SPD), 155-59, 160-62, 165, 212
stative, 84, 88, 155-56, 158-60
subject-copying, 12, 34-37, 40, 62-65
substratum influence, 17, 25-26, 45, 48-51, 120-22, 130-31, 303-5, 310
superstrate influence, 46, 55, 122, 305, 318
Tasmanians, 300
temporal clauses, 12
tense-modality-aspect (TMA) systems, 26, 58-59, 73-99 passim, 160,
211, 238, 242, 278-86, 308, 318
in acquisition, 162-81 passim in Guyanese Creole, 91-97
in Hawaiian Creole English, 26-30, 39, 59
in Papi.amentu, 80-81, 85-88 "
SUBJECT INDEX 351
in Sao
Tomense, 75-77
in Seychelles Creole, 83-85, 88-90, 92-97
theory, role of, 45 time, 278
Tok Pisin, 3-4, 73-74, 81-82' 114, 140
topicalization, 107
transmission problem, 48-49
Trinidad, 47
truth values, 256-57
Turkish, 197
Turkish acquisition, 161, 198-200, 203-5, 212, 312
Twi, 79
universals, linguistic, 42, 136, 159, 293, 297-98
variation, linguistic, 89, 137, 142, 181, 305, 311
verb-copying, 52, 54, 127-29
verb phrase, 52-55, 124, 309
verb serialization, 50, 117-32 passim, 187, 276-77, 292-93
Visayan, 10
vocal channel, 264, 266
wave theory, 89
WH-movement, 111-15, 188-89, 313
word formation, 272
word order, 11-12, 18, 20-22, 120, 272-73, 281, 292
Yoruba, 48-50, 54-55, 131-32, 258, 306-7
zero subject, 101